Talking With Insurance Companies

If your home burns down in a fire, a fire damage insurance claims adjuster will come to your address to assess the extent of the damage and how much it would cost to repair or rebuild your home. There are several documents that you can give the adjuster to help them establish an accurate estimate of the damage.

Pictures Immediately After the Fire

You'll likely have access to your home before the fire damage claims adjuster can arrive on-site, and any documentation you're able to obtain immediately after a fire could prove helpful. In particular, pictures are useful because they serve as an objective document that shows what your home was like after the fire.

There are a couple of situations where pictures are particularly helpful. Should a storm cause further damage, pictures that you took after the fire but before the storm will show exactly what damage the storm caused. If burglars raid your home after the fire, pictures can show what was in your home before the theft took place.

You should never enter a home after a fire unless a qualified fire inspector tells you that it's safe to do so. If you're able to, though, take pictures of everything that you see inside. 

If you're not able to safely go inside your damaged home, take pictures from outside of the home where you can stand without putting yourself at risk of injury. Many cameras today have long zoom lenses, so you should be able to get some photos looking through windows, doorways, or holes in walls.

Since you don't know what pictures will ultimately be useful to a fire damage claims adjuster, take a lot of photos. Photograph more than you think is necessary, and give them all to the adjuster. The adjuster can then select the ones that they need and discard the unnecessary ones.

Timesheet of Your Personal Efforts

Your insurance policy, depending on its terms, might provide compensation for cleanup work that you do following a fire. In order to establish how much time you've put into cleanup and other efforts, create a timesheet. 

When you meet with a fire damage claims adjuster, they can tell you exactly what they want for a timesheet. You don't have to wait until you meet with them to create a simple one, though, and you should begin one even before you meet with an adjuster so that all of your time is counted in the estimate.

For more information about what documents you should give to an insurance adjuster after a fire, contact a business like disasterrecoveryadjustersllc.