Having a destructive, raging fire in our house may seem like losing someone in the family. Nothing can prepare us for the loss of our home, especially if there are decades of family memories in it. After the fire, our lives will change dramatically and coordinating the recovery process is actually a full time job. The process may actually consume our lives for a year. Even if our house is protected by insurance policies, we still need to have a road map that can navigate us through the maze of detours and curves before we can actually get our claim. Here are things that we do to make the process easier:
Understand the Insurance adjustor
Insurance adjustor may also be called the independent contractor. He or she works on the behalf of our insurance company. The company expects the adjustor to save money and they want to make their customers happy. If we want to obtain our claim, we should try to work with the adjustors and have good relationship with them.
Check our Policy
We should know our policy and we need to know what our insurance policy covers. It is essentially a contract between the insurance company and us. In this case, we make a demand for payments as mentioned in the contract. After we know what’s covered, we will know our goals. The actual value of our house may increase, so it is important that the insurance policy covers that. In order to ease the process, we should always report any upgrade we make to the house, before the disaster strikes, especially during the renewal. Unfortunately, many homeowners are reluctant to do this, because it means that the premium will be higher.
Quickly report the claim
We should call the insurance company and the agent quickly and as soon as possible. In fact, the policy may specify that we should make notification within specific time frame. We should be able to speed things along by getting the agent involved in the process. This is also a way to get some personal attention for our situation. We shouldn’t sit back and wait. It is important to keep in touch with the insurance adjustor. We should be aware that the insurance company may need to deal with hundreds of claims simultaneously. We should be able to make our claim stands out by providing enough information and evidences, including extra photos and videos, documenting the aftermath of the fire.We need to document everything, including the summary of conversation with the insurance adjustors.
Perform repairs whenever possible
In many cases, our house isn’t completely demolished by fire and it is still habitable. In this case, we could still make temporary repairs, such as making sure that the electricity, water and others are still running. We may need to hire cleanup workers to remove any debris after the evidence gathering process is concluded. We should make sure that the cleanup and temporary processes are also covered by the insurance policy. All receipts related to the recovery process should be placed in safe place for future claims.