Transcript for Snow dangers: How to keep homes and families safe
could do to your home dumping hundreds of pounds on snow on your roof and ABC's Matt Gutman is in New Jersey with more on that side of the story. Good morning, Matt. Reporter: Hey, good morning, robin. The big concern with those hundreds of pounds piling up on your roof is a roof collapse. Now, this particular storm offers the worst of all worlds for homeowners. Check out this snow, it is heavy. It is wet and with it blowing with this blizzard it's piling up in some of the most precarious parts of people's roofs. As the blizzard barges in, a concern for many homeowners. Roof collapses. Videos of roofs caving in accumulating as fast as that heavy snow. More than 200 collapses causing close to $4 million in damage and just one county in the west. Proomenting the governor in Idaho is issue a state of emergency that is still currently in effect now. The snow is stacking up and we need to do all we can to help them get back to Normal. Reporter: How much snow puts your roof at risk? While there is no nationwide standard roofs are generally built to withstand at least 20 pounds per square foot. Four feet of fresh snow or more than two feet of packed snow can exceed that weight limit. To learn how to avoid a cave-in we spoke with retired fire captain Scott Warner at the safety training academy. What is the signs that the structure might be failing? You can hear creaking and popping, cracking noise of the wood to fail. If you start hearing these noises, what do you do? Get out as fast as you can. Reporter: So, the experts say what you want to do is get the snow off your roof. Snow shovel, not going to help you. Ditch that. We have a snow rake and you can buy this. With our drone shot you can see what happens when the snow piles up on flat and low pitched roofs so what you'll want to do is get a ladder, you're going to climb up the ladder very, very carefully and what you'll do is use the snow rake to take some of the snow off the roof. Don't want to park it too close to the rooftop because you don't want that snow coming down on you like that. That's a bad thing. Now, you want to be careful using the ladder. There are perils in using ladders so what the experts have told us hire professionals to do this for you. But you do want to get that snow off your roof, robin. But it's difficult for the professional, as well, right, Matt? Reporter: That's right. I mean it is very treacherous out there to get around and those firefighters said don't do anything that's going to get yourself in trouble because it'll take them a long time to get to you. Yes, it will. Great advice there.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
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