You get home late at night after a movie with the wife and kids, you open the door and immediately something doesn’t seem right. You pause, listen and then you hear it…. a fizzing, sprinkling, gurgling kind of sound. You walk over to the basement door, open it and there it is… your own little ‘inland sea’. Your pipes have burst and you’re faced with a flood recovery emergency situation.
This is nothing you ever studied in school. What do you do?
The good news is that you’re not the first person this has ever happened to. Each year across the country lots of people have problems with flooding in their homes. Sometimes it’s due to weather or other natural conditions and at other times it’s due to some malfunction in your home plumbing or perhaps even something of faulty design.
Regardless of the cause, the recommended course of action (from the pros) is pretty much the same and here’s what you should do:
The first thing you should do is pay attention to what’s going on and what just happened. You’re going to have to fill out some claim forms (assuming you have insurance to cover this kind of damage) and the more information you can give the insurance company the easier it’ll be for them to justify paying the claim.
Next, call your insurance professional. Don’t worry about waking them up. If the company has a 24/7/365 toll-free ‘hot line’ so much the better. You should call it first and then call your agent to let him know what happened. Don’t worry about waking him or her up because this is an opportunity for him/her to give the ‘good neighbor’ service they’ve been bragging about.
It’s not unusual for your insurance agent to have a certain amount of discretionary authority to write checks to cover such things as perhaps a night in the motel for you and your family. It depends on your policy provisions of course.
Next (and quickly) make sure all your utilities are turned off. Electricity can be dangerous when there’s water around. And go ahead and turn off the water… and the gas too if you have it.
If the water in your basement came from a local river, creek or stream, listen for public service announcements to see if the water is healthy or not. It might not be.
Odds are that you’ll want to retain the services of a professional emergency flood water removal services company to handle the cleanup. If your insurance agent recommends one, it’s probably a safe bet that they’re OK to use plus you’ll have the assurance that they’re familiar with dealing with your insurance company.
If your agent or insurance company can’t or won’t recommend anyone, you’d be wise to have a company already checked out. Have their number handy where you can call them in a hurry. Don’t worry about the hour of the night or day because that’s just part of their business model.
Be careful about coming in contact with that flood water yourself because it’s probably got a lot of bacteria and germs in it. If you do, be sure to wash your hands very thoroughly.
If, for whatever reason, you decide to drain the water yourself, don’t do it all in one day. That’s a dangerous thing to do because it creates a pressure differential between the area outside the walls vs. inside of the basement. It could cause the walls and/or foundation to crack.
Also be sure you dress appropriately for working around possibly contaminated water. And also don’t forget the probability that all the little crawly-critters who’ve been enjoy the domestic tranquillity of your dark, dry, secluded basement will be rather agitated now. Some of them might want to take their anger out on you… i.e. they can bite. So…. dress appropriately.
Any way you slice it, having an emergency flood recovery situation to deal with is no ‘walk in the park’ but with proper planning you can get your life back in good working order with minimal effort. Just be prepared.
July
09
2014