If a storm has recently destroyed or damaged your home in Minnesota, you and your family may not know how to handle the devastation. You may have questions that need to be answered right away. You may also need to make quick decisions—it’s a lot to handle!
Intelligent Design Corporation, Maple Grove storm and fire damage restoration pros, is here to help. Below is a short guide of after-disaster must-do’s.
Make Sure Your Family and Home Is Safe
This goes beyond a standard roll-call—you have to fully assess if your home is still safe to stay in. In some cases, such as with extensive fire damage, the answer to this may be obvious and unchangeable. In other cases, such as relatively minor instances of water damage, it might not be so obvious.
This judgment is best made on a case-by-case basis and with help from a provider of emergency personnel and restoration services. Contact the appropriate water damage and fire damage pros as soon as your family is out of harm’s way; you should square away at least a temporary living situation and take care of your loved ones physically and emotionally before moving on to the more complicated post-disaster tasks below.
Reach Out to Emergency Water and Fire Damage Restoration Services
While storm damage can vary in scale from a couple hail dents to a downright emergency, anything that involves a house fire or flood requires immediate emergency attention from water damage restoration pros. This is due to a number of things, but the primary danger factor here is mold growth.
Water, be it from a fire hose or burst pipe, seeps far deeper than meets the eye. If every last drop of this water isn’t dealt with, you could be seeing mold growth in as soon as 24 hours, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency—though the general range is between 24 to 48. Given that mold can cause a variety of health problems, according to the CDC, this is certainly not something you want to be dealing with on top of a natural disaster.
Contact Your Insurance Company
One of the first phone calls you will make if a storm has damaged your home is to your insurance provider. The sooner you call them, the sooner they can send an insurance adjuster to your home.
If possible, take photos of the damage and make some notes. When you call your provider, give them as many details as possible including the time and date of the incident. Ask the insurance agent what the next step is. Comply with their requests as soon as possible.
Contact A Roofing Contractor
If your property was damaged in a natural disaster, there’s a good chance that other properties in your area were damaged as well. All affected homeowners will be searching for a contractor to fix the damage as soon as possible.
You benefit from contacting a contractor ASAP. When you contact Intelligent Design, we can send a professional out to your home to inspect the damage. We’ll also work with your insurance adjuster to confirm that the damage was caused by a natural disaster.
We also provide comprehensive roofing and home repair to take the worry out of recovering your damages.
Prevention Is the Best Medicine
We sincerely hope you’re reading this as a preparatory guide, not as an in-the-moment how-to—if you’re doing the latter, get to work securing your home and belongings!
If you’re brushing up on your knowledge so that it shines through in a crisis, know that preventing damage is oftentimes done before the storm, flood, or fire even begins. Take the following steps now so that you have less to worry about if the worst does come to pass.
Protect Crucial Documents
Get a heavy-duty small safe to put your documents in. Documents may include original building blueprints, warranties, insurance policies, and purchase agreements. Also consider getting ahold of digital copies of these agreements if the law and technology allows. If something, against all odds, happens to that safe, you’ll be glad you did.
Make an Emergency Contact List
This would include emergency contacts, next of kin, your insurance company, a trusted contractor, and lodging arrangements—anyone you could need to get ahold of when your home becomes unsafe to live in.
Strengthen Your Home
Intelligent Design Corporation offers home inspections for a variety of your home’s exterior needs. We’ll identify weaknesses in your home’s structure and perform the necessary maintenance so that when the time comes, you can feel safe under your own roof.
Check Your Insurance and Home Warranty Policies
Don’t assume that you have adequate insurance coverage or warranty protection; contact your insurance provider to review your policy now so you can take proper action as far as documentation goes after a storm. The same goes for your home warranty.
Make an Escape Plan
Where will you go if you cannot stay in your home? With whom will you stay? If your car is damaged in the storm, who is coming to pick you up? Answer all these questions and more so that you and your family can stay safe.
Intelligent Design Corporation: Maple Grove Storm Restoration and More
If your property was damaged by a storm, we can help you rebuild your home. We offer roofing repair and replacement services alongside a wealth of others. Call now at 763-315-0745, or you can message us on our contact page.