The first hour

• Fire & smoke
• Water
• Biohazard
• Mold

Why the first hour matters more than the rest of the day #Link to this section

The decisions that cost the most money are made in the first hour, by someone who has never made them before, usually while being advised by the only person in the room who gets paid based on the answer.

None of what follows requires equipment, expertise, or money. It requires you to do things in an order that is not the order your instincts will suggest. Your instinct is to start moving things out of the water. The order below puts documentation before that, because a photograph you did not take is the one piece of evidence you cannot recreate later.

What counts as “making it safe” #Link to this section

Safety here is specific, not general. The four warnings at the top of this page are the entire list, and each one has a clear test:

• Standing water and electricity. Is there water in a room that also has outlets, appliances, or a panel? Then the room is not safe to enter, regardless of how shallow the water looks.
• A ceiling holding water, or a fire-weakened structure. A bulging ceiling is holding weight. After a fire, the framing has been heated and the fire department has to release the structure before anyone goes in.
• Carbon monoxide or smoke inhalation. A sounding CO alarm, or symptoms that improve when someone leaves the building.
• Sewage, blood, or other potentially infectious material. This is not a mopping job, and it is not a question of how strong your stomach is.

If none of those apply, you can move on. If any of them do, the rest of this page waits.

Stopping the source, without making it worse #Link to this section

Stopping the water is usually the most useful physical thing you can do, and it is often simpler than people expect — most homes have a main shutoff where the supply enters, and most fixtures have their own stop valve.

The condition is access. If reaching the shutoff means walking through standing water in a room with outlets or a panel, it is not worth it, and the utility can shut the supply from outside. The same applies to the breaker panel: shut off power there only if the panel is dry and you can reach it without stepping in water.

After a fire there is usually no source left to stop, because the fire department has already done it. What remains is that the building is full of suppression water, and that water is now the active problem.

Documenting: what to capture, in what order #Link to this section

Work from wide to close, and finish before you move anything.

1. A wide shot of each affected room from the doorway, so the extent is obvious.
2. The source — the failed pipe, the appliance, the ceiling opening, the fixture.
3. The water line or smoke line on the wall, which shows how high it got.
4. Close-ups of damaged contents, with model and serial numbers where they exist.
5. A short walkthrough video with the date audible, narrating what you are seeing.

Then keep every receipt, and keep the daily monitoring logs if equipment gets installed. If a contractor puts fans and dehumidifiers in your house, those logs are how anyone later establishes that the equipment was doing something.

Do not throw anything away until the adjuster has authorized it, even things that are obviously ruined. The ruined item is the evidence.

Naming what you have #Link to this section

Guidance that does not name these is not specific enough to act on, which is why every page here does.

• Water is graded by category. Category 1 is clean supply water. Category 2 is significantly contaminated. Category 3 is grossly contaminated — sewage, rising external water. The category decides what gets dried and what gets removed, and it degrades with time.
• Smoke is graded by residue type. Dry smoke, wet smoke, protein residue and fuel-oil soot behave differently and depend on what burned, not on how big the fire was.
• Coverage turns on the peril, and for water, on whether it came from inside the building or outside it.

The one instruction nobody else gives you #Link to this section

You will very likely be handed a document in the first few hours. It may be called a work authorization, a direction to pay, or an assignment of benefits. It will be presented as a formality that lets the work start.

An assignment of benefits transfers your rights under the insurance claim to the contractor. After signing, the contractor — not you — deals with the insurer, bills the insurer, and in many states can pursue the insurer directly. The rules around them vary substantially by state, and several states have changed them in recent years.

This page does not tell you whether to sign one. It tells you that it is a decision with consequences, that nothing about the first hour requires you to make it, and that anyone insisting otherwise is telling you something about themselves.