Property Damage? Now What?!

Sudden property damage can cause financial and emotional hardship on both those directly affected due to loss of their living quarters and indirectly to those now losing out on income from that property. Fire, water, mold, vandalism, vehicle damage, illegal drug labs, human remains cleanup and law enforcement actions can all take place rather quickly and can have a devastating effect. They can occur to any age property, at any location and at any time.

Preparation and implementation are the main steps you must take to minimize disruption and difficulties when faced with property damage. Start with a folder, notebook or file to be your emergency file and have one for each property. The emergency file should contain everything from contact information for the utilities at that property to emergency contact information for the tenants, red-cross information, your insurance information, maintenance team and your emergency vendor provider.

Do NOT rely solely upon your insurance company to handle your emergency needs. They are but one part of your emergency plan. The insurance company is set up to indemnify you for a covered loss…in other words, pays you back for the damage if they are covered by in the policy. They are not there to hire vendors to repair your property. As part of your preparation, meet with your agent on an annual basis to review your policies, limitations and deductibles. Make sure that the agent is aware of the steps you are taking to minimize your exposure such as adding smoke detectors, and changing out plumbing appliance supply lines. Discuss your policy with your emergency vendor as they are very familiar with the industry and the most frequent issues that come up.

Do your homework. A good restoration vendor has the knowledge, experience and equipment to handle the variety of challenging aspects that are over and above a regular contractor or builder. There are many restoration professionals available, but there are fewer and fewer that are truly staffed, funded and operated as professionally as you need them to be. Contact and meet with your emergency service providers before any loss occurs and they too can assist you with preparing your emergency file. A high-quality, emergency vendor will be happy to have you come to their facility to assist you with your pre-planning and also be willing to meet with you at your property. Just like you may have a plumber, handyperson and gardener, you should also have an emergency response team in place.

Once damage has occurred, implement your plan. The key here is to take an honest assessment and determine if this is above the capacity of your maintenance staff. If you are not sure, call your emergency vendors, and discuss the situation. A quality emergency vendor will be your advocate and want to keep you as a satisfied client. The best emergency vendors will have a dispatcher available 24 hours. An answering service after hours is simply not enough in this case. You should also contact your insurance company. Though your agent may not be available after hours, your insurance company will most likely have a staffed call center available 24 hours a day. Plan on the fact that you will not have contact with the adjuster that will handle your claim until normal business hours and other than the larger losses, an adjuster may not inspect your property for several days to a week or more.

Mitigation, restoration and reconstruction are terms used frequently in the property repair and insurance industry and can be somewhat interchangeable at times. Regardless of who your insurance company is, you as the policy holder have a “duty to mitigate” your loss. In other words, you must do what is necessary to prevent further damage. DO NOT WAIT for the adjuster before you mitigate your damages. Boarding up, covering up, cleaning up, extraction of water, drying of building spaces are all examples of mitigation. Restoration is typically what is done to repair existing items that are not in need of replacement and reconstruction is exactly what it sounds like. Mitigation is the most critical and time sensitive when there is water involved. The thing to remember is that there is typically much more water involved than you may know: A ½ inch water hose will emit approximate 600 gals of water per hour! A washing machine hose is a ½ inch water hose. Just because the leak has been stopped or the fire put out, until the mitigation has been completed, the damage continues and with water, this secondary damage can lead to mold in a relatively short amount of time. Similar to water, smoke and soot will continue to erode many items in the structure until it is cleaned.

After the loss has occurred, your plan implemented and mitigation has been completed, your emergency vendor and the insurance adjuster will work to reach an agreement on both the scope of work (what needs to be done) and the cost of the work. Changes that you want to make to the scope of work are between you and your vendors.

Finally, in regards to claims payments, if there is a lender on the property or a mortgagee, they too will be named on the check from the insurance company. It is required that the insurance company protects a lenders financial interest in the event of a loss. All lenders are different in how they release funds but typically it will involve inspections on their part and because of that, it is best to get them on notice as soon as possible to learn what they require and how best to facilitate it.

In conclusion, by preparing for the unexpected, you too can minimize any problems and facilitate the rapid repairs to your property so you can get the property back to a pre-loss condition!

Har-Bro, a full service mitigation, restoration and reconstruction provider has been in the property restoration business since 1961 and has offices in Long Beach, Riverside, San Diego, Valencia, Hayward, Portland, Seattle, Phoenix and Las Vegas. Har-Bro has completed projects from the smallest to losses in excess of $21 million dollars. You can learn more about Har-Bro at www.harbro.com or by calling 800-266-5677.

By: John Temoyan