What does the red cross do after a house fire?
- Fire & smoke
- Water
- Mold
The American Red Cross provides immediate help after a home fire — emergency lodging, usually a hotel, financial assistance for urgent needs such as clothing and food, replacement of essential medications, and emotional support. Call 1-800-RED-CROSS. It is not insurance and does not replace a claim, but it arrives the same night.
The short version
- The Red Cross responds to single-home fires, not only to declared disasters. That is the difference from FEMA.
- Volunteers help find temporary shelter in a hotel and provide basic toiletries.
- Financial assistance covers urgent needs — clothing, lodging, transportation — and can extend to replacing lost items and security deposits.
- They help replace essential medications and connect people to longer-term community resources.
- One number — 1-800-RED-CROSS.
What they actually provide Link to this section
Emergency lodging. Volunteers work with community partners to find temporary shelter, commonly a hotel, and provide basic toiletries such as toothbrushes and toothpaste.
Immediate financial assistance. For urgent needs — clothing, lodging, transportation — and extending in some cases to longer-term essentials such as replacing lost items, security deposits and home repairs.
Essential medications. Help replacing prescriptions lost in the fire, which is easy to overlook on the night and difficult to sort out afterwards.
Emotional support and referral. Trained volunteers, and connection to community resources for temporary housing and recovery.
The number is 1-800-RED-CROSS, and it is worth calling from the scene rather than the next morning.
Why this is different from FEMA Link to this section
FEMA’s Individuals and Households Program requires a presidentially declared disaster. A single-home fire is not one, so FEMA assistance is generally unavailable for it — and FEMA’s own guidance directs people in that position to HUD, to Health and Human Services, or to the 211 referral line.
The Red Cross has no such requirement. It responds to individual house fires as a matter of routine, which makes it the correct first call in exactly the situation where FEMA is not.
What it is not Link to this section
It is not insurance, and it is not a settlement. The amounts are designed to get a household through the first days — somewhere to sleep, clothes, food, medication — not to replace a home or its contents.
That matters for sequencing. Accept the help, and open the insurance claim the same day, because the two run on completely different timescales and the slow one needs starting first.
The other calls worth making that night Link to this section
- Your insurer, to open the claim and ask specifically about loss of use.
- 211, the community referral line, for local assistance programs.
- Your mortgage servicer, which usually needs to be notified and is often a named payee on claim checks.
- Utilities, to stop billing and to make the property safe.
- A trusted person who is not in the house, to hold copies of documents and photographs.
What this means for your claim
Red Cross assistance and your insurance claim are separate, and taking one does not affect the other. The distinction worth holding on to is that Red Cross help is immediate and small; loss of use is slower and larger.
Both need records. Keep whatever the Red Cross provides in writing, and start the loss of use file the same night — hotel, meals above normal, clothing you had to buy, pet boarding. Those receipts are what the additional living expenses portion of your policy is settled from, and the first forty-eight hours generate a surprising number of them.
What comes next
Immediate help is the first hour; the claim is the next twelve months. Expect the second to run long, because a fire leaves three problems in one building — dry smoke or wet smoke residue through rooms the flames never reached, suppression water that is Category 3 once it has run across a burned structure, and mold in whatever is not dried inside EPA's 24 to 48 hour window. See loss of use and additional living expenses, smoke residue types, water categories, assistance and relief, and what to photograph before anything is cleared from the house.
Common mistakes
- Assuming they only respond to declared disasters. Single-home fires are the majority of their responses.
- Waiting until the next day to call. The lodging help is designed for the night of the fire.
- Treating the assistance as a reason to delay opening the insurance claim.
- Not mentioning prescription medications lost in the fire, which they help replace.
- Re-entering a fire-damaged building to retrieve belongings before the fire department has released it.
Common follow-up questions
Do I have to pay any of it back?
No. Red Cross disaster assistance is a grant rather than a loan, and it is not conditional on your insurance status. Taking it does not reduce what your policy pays, because loss of use reimburses expenses you actually incurred and the two are accounted for separately.
What if I am a renter?
The Red Cross responds to households, not to owners. Renters get the same assistance. A renters policy also carries loss of use, which is the coverage renters most often do not realize they have — worth asking about on the same day.
Can they help me get back into the house for documents?
Re-entry is the fire department's decision, not theirs, and a fire-damaged structure is not safe until it is released. Once it is, what you retrieve should be photographed where it lies before it is moved, because that record is what the contents portion of the claim is built from.
Sources
Every source cited on this page
- T1Recovering Financially after a Disaster — American Red Cross (accessed 2026-08-25)
- T1What To Do After A Home Fire — American Red Cross (accessed 2026-08-25)
- T1Individuals and Households Program — FEMA (accessed 2026-08-25)