Public Adjusters & Insurance Appraisers

A Catastrophic House Fire First 30 Days After A Fire

A Public Adjuster’s Guide To The First 30 Days After A Fire: Part I

Franklin Property Claims LogoIn the unset­tling after­math of a cat­a­stroph­ic fire, the path to recov­ery may seem daunt­ing. The first 30 days after a fire are piv­otal in lay­ing the ground­work for a smoother claim process. Whether you decide to hire a Pub­lic Adjuster or not, here is the first part of a com­pre­hen­sive guide to help home­own­ers through this crit­i­cal peri­od.

 

 

 

Prevent Additional Damage

Every homeowner’s pol­i­cy has a clause in it that requires you to take steps to pre­vent addi­tion­al dam­age to your dwelling.  This could mean board­ing up bro­ken win­dows and doors or tarp­ing the roof where fire­men have cre­at­ed a hole to vent the fire.  It is your respon­si­bil­i­ty and duty, not the insur­ance company’s, to mit­i­gate any dam­age.  If you don’t do this your insur­ance car­ri­er could refuse to pay for some of the inte­ri­or dam­age that they believe was caused by the intru­sion of rain that would not have occurred had you ful­filled your con­trac­tu­al duty and tak­en the nec­es­sary steps to pre­vent any more dam­age.  The good news is that your insur­ance com­pa­ny will reim­burse you for this expense so hold onto any receipts to give to your adjuster (but make a copy first for your files).

Meeting with the Adjuster

First, most adjusters assigned to a claim are good peo­ple, but they have a job to do; and that job is to be a loy­al and faith­ful employ­ee.  The best way to demon­strate that to their boss­es is by fol­low­ing com­pa­ny train­ing and guide­lines when han­dling your claim and focus­ing on their objec­tive.  And that objec­tive is to man­age your claim in such a way so that they pay out the least amount pos­si­ble with­out you know­ing it.

These adjusters rep­re­sent their employ­ers’ inter­ests, not yours.  This doesn’t make them “bad” peo­ple. (You can’t begrudge some­one for hav­ing a job and being loy­al to their employ­er.  That’s just life.)  You just have to remem­ber that there are two sides to a claim and they are on one side, and you are on the oth­er. If your prop­er­ty is in Ken­tucky this is just one of the rea­sons to con­sid­er engag­ing a Pub­lic Adjuster. The same with any oth­er state in the south­east.

Sec­ond, it’s not unusu­al at the ini­tial meet­ing to be asked to give a record­ed state­ment.  It’s rather rou­tine so don’t be con­cerned about it.  Most of the ques­tions revolve around the cir­cum­stances of the fire. While you’re being record­ed make sure to ask for a copy of the tran­script for your files.  Fol­low up with an email reit­er­at­ing your request for a copy of the tran­script.  Read the tran­script to make sure it cap­tures exact­ly what you said!

Which leads me to my third point: get the adjuster’s email address and cell num­ber.  You will need both for obvi­ous rea­sons.

On their first vis­it, the adjuster will spend time on site tak­ing pho­tographs and mea­sure­ments. They will need this raw data to put your esti­mate togeth­er.  Before they leave your prop­er­ty ask them when they expect to have your esti­mate done and sent to you.  Write down this date and be pre­pared to email them on that date ask­ing for an update.  Depend­ing on the size of the fire it can take any­where from 2–4 weeks.

Communication

Keep all com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the adjuster in writ­ing via email.  This way nobody has to trust their mem­o­ry.  Grow­ing up, my dad used to tell me that the dullest lead pen­cil was still bet­ter than the sharpest mem­o­ry.

To be clear, I am not say­ing to nev­er talk to your adjuster over the phone.  But I am say­ing that after such a call send him or her an email memo­ri­al­iz­ing the con­ver­sa­tion about what was dis­cussed and any­thing that was agreed to.  This will send an unmis­tak­able mes­sage to the adjuster that you are tak­ing your claim seri­ous­ly and will cause them to be more pro­fes­sion­al in their inter­ac­tions with you.

The insur­ance company’s adjuster is keep­ing a dig­i­tal log of all his site vis­its, emails and phone calls with you.  If it’s impor­tant enough for them to do it, then it should be equal­ly impor­tant to you so keep your own log or jour­nal.  Large fire loss­es can get com­pli­cat­ed and take longer than you ever expect­ed so you will be glad if you have doc­u­ment­ed your claim as it moves through the process.

The first thing that I would sug­gest that you email your adjuster for is a com­plete dig­i­tal copy of your pol­i­cy.  They can eas­i­ly email it to you. It’s impor­tant that you have in your pos­ses­sion the most recent ver­sion of your pol­i­cy so you can know with cer­tain­ty what your lim­its of cov­er­age are and can deter­mine for your­self any addi­tion­al cov­er­ages you have that you can avail your­self of…and there are usu­al­ly sev­er­al of them.  Don’t leave it up to your adjuster to tell you.  (Your entire pol­i­cy will be 25–40+ pages. If you only receive 2–4 pages then you didn’t get your pol­i­cy.  If it’s only a few pages, you most like­ly only got your Dec­la­ra­tions page.  Ask again.)

Document Your Loss with Photos

At your first oppor­tu­ni­ty take a dig­i­tal cam­era (or use your smart phone) and take pho­tos of every­thing.  I would sug­gest that you start with tak­ing  pho­tos of the out­side of your home first.  Go around your house in a clock­wise man­ner tak­ing wide-angle pho­tos of each side of the house and then close-ups of spe­cif­ic fire and smoke dam­age you find.

Like­wise, when you get inside go through your house in the most log­i­cal way pos­si­ble.  (I would encour­age you to wear a sur­gi­cal mask when doing this as there are fine par­tic­u­lates of soot in the air that can be unhealthy for you to be breath­ing in.  You may need a flash­light also to get around as the elec­tric­i­ty will have been cut off.)

Take a wide-angle pho­to from the four cor­ners of each room.  Pho­tos should include ones that include floor and ceil­ings, not just the walls.   Don’t for­get to open up clos­et doors and get some good pho­tos of what’s in them and do the same for draw­ers.  Do the same for attics and base­ments.

 

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