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House fire: New update 8/15 in first post

Barb_

By Barb_,
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Barb_

Barb_

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Our college daughter accidentally ignited our kitchen cabinets with a candle and the whole house went up like a tinder box.  She and her boyfriend were there to clean it out and restock it for us.  We were due to come back home right after labor day. They made it out and are alive but she is in shock.

 

Is there anyone who has recently gone through insurance adjustment and can help answer some questions.?

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One of the girls just said to me, "I can't wrap my mind around this. The fire happened yesterday but it feels like it was a week or more ago."  My head is spinning.  So if I don't respond or credit certain posts I apologize in advance.  

 

This is what we know.  We're out of state for the summer.  The daughter I posted about a couple of months ago went by our house in Phoenix in June to grab some things from her old room.  While we were gone, the big, nasty, flying sewer roaches had crawled up the drains and cleanouts and were making themselves at home all over our house.  She went to the home depot and grabbed bug bombs and set them off all over and quickly took off back to Tucson.  She was pretty freaked out and disgusted and just flew through there as fast as she could.  She cut the unnecessary breakers to the house (I always cut them when we're gone to reduce the risk of electrical fires) and left to Tucson.  Unbeknownst to her, while rushing she accidentally cut the refrigerator and the smoke alarms.

 

She flew out and spent six weeks with us and then returned to Phoenix to stay with her boyfriend and his family.  She went by our house to check on it and the smell of the dead hit her in the face.  I had meat in the freezer that spent six weeks in the summer in Phoenix with the a/c turned up to 92 degrees.  She and her boyfriend returned later that week to tackle the nasty job of cleaning out the fridge.  She said the stench permeated the entire house including their hair and clothes, so they had stripped to undies and a sportsbra to clean and put their bags with their clean clothes in the bathroom by the front door and stuck towels around the crack to keep the stink out.  Around 11am they decided to take a shower and grab their set-aside clothes and go have breakfast.  She lit a scented candle and put it on the tile floor away from anything and left it there.  The fire marshal said that the cleaner they had been using was a solvent and highly flammable, and the fumes actually ignited and the refrigerator caught fire burning for at least 20 minutes.  The smoke alarms didn't go off because the batteries were dead and the power was still cut.  She smelled smoke and flew out of the shower in my bedroom (leaving it on, which saved a lot of my clothes), down the stairs and to the kitchen.  She said by that point she couldn't get into the kitchen because the smoke was so thick. Her boyfriend came running down after her and she screamed to get out of the house.  He called the fire dept and she ran around the back of the house to cut the electricity, which I'm so happy she did because maybe my desktop hard drive isn't completely fried.  

 

The fire trucks came in under 5 mins but the whole back of the house was burning by that point.  The second story was okay at this point and I'm getting the play by play all day long.  But the story kept getting worse.  They gave the all clear and most of the trucks had gone when the attic suddenly caught fire again and began to burn from the top down.  They got that under control only for it to reignite a last time.  At this point they just pumped I don't know how many tens or hundreds of thousands of gallons onto our roof.  They pumped water until they had washed away our roof and our attic.  Now we have a sunroof.  

 

My oldest daughter drove in from the east valley and grabbed them and took them to lunch.  Neighbors I'd never met brought them clothes.  Emily was in a towel barefoot and her boyfriend was still wearing boxers.  She was hysterical because she thought the police were there to arrest her for setting the house on fire.  Meghan said that cop looked like a deer in the headlights and was totally out of his element with that, lol.

 

So I think we've found a house to rent a street over.  It's an old acquaintance.  Our kids used to play together but grew apart after they moved.  I feel like I'm stabbing monsters in the dark but against odds things are beginning to come together.  I'll respond to more as I can.  It's getting late and I only managed about 3.5 hours sleep last night.  
 

Thank you again for your kindness and moral support.  I keep reading all the nice comments and I've taken some of the excellent advice.  You are all amazing people.

 

Barb

 

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I talked to the oldest girl today and she told me that she'd spoken to the fire marshal after the original speculation regarding the solvents.  Upon further examination, he believes it was actually the methane from the rotted meat that ignited.  We still don't have the report, but I still thought I'd pass that on.

 

Barb

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Guest

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Oh no! I'm so sorry! How extensive is the damage at first blush?

 

I have little sleep so experience with this but I'm so glad they're safe. Amen for that!

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It looks like a total loss.

Oh my goodness, I'm SO sorry! First step would be to contact your insurance agent. Let them walk you through it. Our State Farm agent is amazing and so reassuring when we have needed to file a claim.

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Barb_

Barb_

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:grouphug:  :grouphug:  :grouphug:

Laughing Lioness went through this a few years ago. You might pm her or check out her blog (listed in her signature).

 

I remembered one of the long timers had gone through this.  Thank you for helping me remember.  My mind is a sieve.

 

Barb

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ktgrok

ktgrok

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Get a public adjustor. They work for you, rather than the insurance company, and come up with their own estimate (always more than the insurance company wants to give you) and back it up, and fight the insurance company for you. they get a small cut of the money you get, but it's totally worth it. Worth every single penny, to have a professional advising you on how to handle everything, what to do, what you are owed, etc. 

 

Google your state and public adjustor and see what comes up. They often travel all over, so it doesn't have to be right in your city. (we had a flood, not a fire, but this guy was amazing)

 

http://www.bankrate.com/finance/insurance/hiring-a-public-adjuster-1.aspx

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Mama Geek

Mama Geek

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:grouphug:

A friend had some damage do to a fire.  I know one of the things she had to do was to make a list of basically anything that was destroyed and to try to come up with a guess of the value of it which was also similar to what we did when our apartment flooded.

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msrift

msrift

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We had an almost complete loss three years ago...three days after we moved in...the week before Christmas. We have insurance through USAA and have nothing but good things to say about them making an awful process survivable.

I do NOT have nice things to say about our contractor.

Feel free to ask any questions.

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Guest

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I am so sorry.

:0(  

 

I'm sure your dd feels awful...but I know YOU feel glad she is safe.  

 

Please keep us posted here; if there are things we can do to help, I know this board will do so.  

 

 

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Soror

Soror

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(hugs) Our house fire was a bit over 9yrs ago now. It was a total loss. The process actually went pretty smoothly. An adjuster was sent a couple of days after the fire and quickly declared it a total loss. We had to fill out questionnaires for contents but the check for the house was issued reasonably quick. Our adjuster actually let us know about things we could get pay out for that we didn't even realize (like landscaping). We had to save receipts for things like eating out and such as that was covered while we were out of our home, as would a motel have been if we needed it. People pitched in with support to get us things immediately (I was 39 wks pregnant at the time and lost everything for the baby- ended up having her at my mom's house the day the adjuster came out). Don't be afraid to take help, there is so much to it all, you will need it. We just took whatever was offered and sorted it out later. Our experience was nothing but positive in dealing with the insurance. 

 

eta- Don't discount the emotional toil. We just kept on trucking and never really slowed down with a house to rebuild, dh already busy enough at work and a newborn and 3yo it was hectic for all of us. I kind of wish I would have stopped to cry- to let it all out- but I never did. I didn't mourn the stuff we lost, I'm not sentimental type. I mourned the time it took from us and the stress of it all. I wish we would have gotten a little camper trailer so we could have at least been on our property during the rebuild, living with the inlaws and then in town was soul crushing for us and it meant even more time away from dh who was working on the rebuild. Of course every body is different but it is pretty devastating and it is ok to mourn it all. Not having your home, that is hard too :( although at times I wished we would have waited a bit on rebuilding so we could have more time to think about it all. Really there is no easy way around it though.

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