How To Document Fire Damage For Insurance
After you experience fire damage, the last thing you want to do is sift through your belongings to see what has been damaged. However, after hiring a fire damage reconstruction specialist, documenting your damage for an insurance claim is the most important step in the rebuilding process. Here are some tips for you to document your damage.
Start Small
It is easy to become overwhelmed when you step into the damaged square footage that once was your home. Try to be like a horse wearing blinders; just zero in on the area in front of you and don’t think about everything that was affected. Don’t try to do all the big items first and leave the small items for last, because you will get overwhelmed taking it all in at once. Instead move to one corner of the room and document everything you see, then move to the next corner, and the next, and so on until the job is done.
Take Breaks
Don’t try to do it all in one day, if the fire damage is extensive. It is likely that you will have a lot of emotional ties to many of the things in your home and going through them may make you break down more than once. Take several breaks. Don’t work for longer than an hour if you can help it. Take 15-minute breaks often and step out of the damaged area to do it. Bring yourself plenty of snacks and water so you can stay full and hydrated. Any way to keep you emotionally and physically happy through this experience will make it run much smoother and faster.
Bring A Friend
Another thing that will help you move the process along and give you the support you need while you are doing this cleaning process is to bring a friend, or five, to help you out. Though your friend likely doesn’t know how much everything is worth or cannot tell what everything is, especially if it is overly damaged, they can be invaluable to help support you and they can be detached enough from the process to keep things working and organized when you need to take a breather. You may want them to go in and take photographs for you so that you can just sift through them later and document each damaged item.
Structural Damage
It will be difficult to identify what kind of structural damage you’ve experienced if you are not a professional, but a fire damage reconstruction professional can help you with that. They will systematically go through your home and determine what needs to be replaced and even give you an estimate. This will be valuable information to have when you are documenting your claim to your insurance company, and you should hold on to whatever type of documentation they give you.
Type Of Documentation
It is important for a fire damage restoration company to work fast after a fire has a occurred to avoid more damage being done, so it important that you work fast to get photographs before they start the work. An insurance company appreciates having both photos and a spreadsheet of items and what their estimated cost would be. It is a lot of work to document this, but if you have any undamaged receipts or photos, these things may be helpful as well. Many people forget that they have receipts from online orders in their email, so remember to look through your inbox while you are collecting documents.
Cousino Restoration & Environmental in Ann Arbor is a certified and insured fire restoration company that will work with your insurance and you to get you through the restoration process as easy as possible.
When you have an emergency – you can rely on our team of experts!