Chubz Posted January 13, 2009 Report Share Posted January 13, 2009 Folks Sad to say that my Dad's house caught fire this morning from his wood burning stove over heating the floor it was resting on. He was awakened by his CO monitor to find the florr on fire, but by that time it spread thru the crawl space floor joists. Dont want to get into the jist of my Root Cause Analysis, but more focused on how he can prepare himself for the next several months from the insurance company, restoration contractors, etc., we have him covered on a place to live. If any one has any straight answers, without the snide comments, my family and i would appreciate the input. Thanks Greg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gecko Posted January 13, 2009 Report Share Posted January 13, 2009 dude that sucks, my aunt and uncle lost their house in Jersey last spring, they had issues with the township over building in the same footprint because the zoning had changed in the 125 years since the house was built. They got everything worked out eventually and ended up doing a lot of Green things to the new place (should be moving in this spring). Code required all rain gutters to be routed into underground piping (they chose to send it all to a cistern for watering the yard) and required them to have a full basement (they decided to finish it adding 50% to the square footage) instead of the crawl space they had. There are companies that sift/search the remains for precious metals, Patience is everything, if any friends of family have pictures of the house and it's contents before the fire that helps with insurance...since for sure you don't have a receipt for the 72" plasma TV Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carvedog Posted January 13, 2009 Report Share Posted January 13, 2009 Chubz - that sucks. I can't imagine anyone being snide or mean. Glad he is ok. Thank God for fire and CO detection. Can't speak to the fire but as the victim of two building related sewage flooding problems in the last four years I can address the insurance side a bit more. As well as the restoration and rebuilding. When the adjuster comes make notes of everything that is said. Take photos of everything. If it is like my flood situation the insurance company will try everything to disallow the claim. If they can say that is was a non-code installation they will. Don't admit anything or claim responsibilty for anything, including the installation. Get the phone number of your states insurance commission and I hope you don't have to use it. When dealing with contractors for rebuilding, try to get a time table in writing with performance penalties if timelines are not met. One thing that I ran into is that if I did the work I would not get reimbursed, but if I had someone do it then they got paid. There logic is that as owner I just had to deal with it. Insurance companies suck. Don't trust that they will do anything they say. Again very sorry to hear about your Dad. Good luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chubz Posted January 13, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 13, 2009 Yea I work for an insurance company, but in loss prevention (the good end). Check on the pics, statements etc. Heading out today to hear the BS from them. Greg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JBS Posted January 13, 2009 Report Share Posted January 13, 2009 Greg, Sorry to hear about your Pops, happy to hear that he is safe and sound. From everything you have told me he sounds super resourceful and should be able to get through this with very little problems. If you need help cleaning up or moving things around I'll be more than happy to pitch in. Good Luck. Jesse Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gecko Posted January 13, 2009 Report Share Posted January 13, 2009 I don't know if your dad is computer literate (not a dig my aunt isn't but my uncle is) one thing that has really helped them is having a laptop on site with BroadBand access everything gets filed, tracked, documented etc. My cousin Malory just bought a small POS camera, a MAC and a AT&T laptop connect card on her way out of NYC to Jersey the morning after the fire. Those sools have made a hugh difference in the ease with which their insurance and rebuilding effort has taken place Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carvedog Posted January 13, 2009 Report Share Posted January 13, 2009 YeaI work for an insurance company, but in loss prevention (the good end). Check on the pics, statements etc. Heading out today to hear the BS from them. Greg Oops sorry. Didn't mean to vilify the whole industry. I know there is a lot of good to come from it. I just went through a horrible time with Allstate commercial lines. My initial claim was from June of 07. They finally paid my business loss in May of 08, almost putting me under in the process. It took me 8 calls to "my" Allstate claim rep to even get one return call. They disallowed the approx 80 hours of extra time I put in to help with the repairs. They disallowed the growth my business was showing at the time in the business loss projections. And it just goes on and on. My revenue for the time of the flood was off about 35k so I am thinking I am going to get something close to that. Cog and fixed overhead accounted for about 1/3 of that and I still had to settle for half of what I thought because they waited a year. :AR15firin:AR15firin:AR15firin:AR15firin:AR15firin One thing I can add besides bitching is that the "restoration specialists" can and did get called away numerous times for other emergencies leaving me hanging for a day or three. The contractors that I insisted on hiring for some of the cabinet work and some othere stuff were much more attuned to getting in and out and finishing the job. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ncermak Posted January 13, 2009 Report Share Posted January 13, 2009 parents house had a fire about 12 years ago...the place was totaled. pm me to get in touch in with them... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
two_ravens Posted January 13, 2009 Report Share Posted January 13, 2009 Oops sorry. I just went through a horrible time with Allstate commercial lines. Chubz, I have no experience with house fires - just heartfelt condolences for your dad's loss, and hope that he gets through this as easily as possible. Carvedog, I had Allstate for my car insurance, but saw that they were rated as THE WORST company for paying car insurance claims. I switched before I had to test that out for myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chubz Posted January 15, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 15, 2009 Carve sorry to hear your expereince. heck i work for an insurance outfit and I was still leary of the whole industry. The large loss adjuster showed up and i saw he works for a subsidiery of my company and the guys did very well. The restoration guys have been good so far but your note on skating when another emergency came up is somethig to note. I am going thru some interviews and pre-qualifying of contractors now. I know some other companies do give the run around, but we are fairly solid in executing process as far as I have expereinced for my customers. Worst thing is seeing how deflted/dejected my Dad is. He always is cheerful, smile on his face and good for a funny story but his A$$ is dragging , chin on his chest, droop in the pants since monday and today he said "I'm Home sick" I just feel bad for him, he's 68 and should be completeyl chilled out day to day but now ahs to go thru this. Its tough on him and he's is being tough on himself along with thinking he is inconveniencing everyone. Thats what family is for. Gotta run, put the kids to bed. Thanks for the notes of good cheer. Later Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ncermak Posted January 15, 2009 Report Share Posted January 15, 2009 your dads feeling are not unusual. my dad took days to go buy some clothes...they lost everything but what they were wearling. for a long time he held onto things that were well past rescue...like computer disks. he spent hours sifting through the rubble. looking for anything he could keep. ultimately, he got the insurance company to rent a trailer, which we parked in the driveway, and my folks lived there for a year while they went throught the rebuilding process. Best of Luck, and bets wishes for a speedy rebuilding... -NBC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chubz Posted January 24, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 24, 2009 While we prepared for it, boarded up doors, windows, nailed doors shut, chain across the driveway etc The F&^%ers still got in and stole enough to p&^% us off, knife collections, 7 chainsaws, multitude of tools. Just when my dad was showing signs of being himself again, we went to the house today to meet with a demo contractor only to find the garage and outbuilding had been broken into. He's right back in the gutter, mentally. Just sucks. his chainsaws were to him, what our boards would be to us. Just feels violating and I had to talk him out of waiting in the garage tonight for them to come again:AR15firin, in fact I had to talk myself out of it:AR15firin. they just took what they could carry in hand, but next time they may have more hands, you never know. Well gotta go. Greg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.