Your home is where you should feel safe and comfortable. However, many unforeseen disasters can affect your home, and there is nothing worse than losing your house in a traumatizing event like a fire. Having your house burned down is a life-changing experience that leaves you shaken for a long time until you can rebuild it. However, there are certain steps that you should take if you ever find yourself in such a difficult situation in order to get some peace back in your life. Here are some of the steps you need to take right away if a fire destroys your house.
1. Contact All House Members
The first step you will need to take after a fire has destroyed your home is to find everyone who lives in the house. Even if you are certain all the people who live in the house are not in it, you should still contact them to let them know what happened and ensure they are safe and can make proper arrangements. Many people get lost in the moment’s shock after a house gets caught on fire, but getting in touch with all house members is vital in such cases.
2. See if the House is Salvageable
The place may seem completely doomed after a house fire, but there are some instances where the place can be salvageable. After you ensure everyone is safe and that the fire is completely put out, you should assess the extent of the fire damage to see if you can salvage the house and fix any parts that need fixing, or if it would be wiser to just tear it down and rebuild it. Fire damage assessment should be carried out by a professional who is trained to assess the state of the property and determine whether it can still be salvaged or not.
3. Get in Touch with Insurer
Nowadays, all houses should be insured against emergency situations such as house fires. As soon as you get out of the house and make sure the scene is cleared, you will need to get in touch with your insurer to see what can be done and how you can be compensated for the damages. If the house is salvageable, you may be able to get a certain amount of money to help fix it. However, if the house is completely burned to ashes, your insurer should be able to cover you with sufficient money to buy a different property or allocate you a different property to live in instead.
4. Grab Your Valuable Possessions
Once the firefighters manage the fire that took over your house, you should try to get inside to grab all your valuable items and take them out before they suffer any further damage. If you leave your items in the aftermath of the fire, they can get badly damaged even after the fire is put out, as the soot can build up over them. Make sure you only go inside the house after it’s safe, and try to only grab the valuable items without getting distracted by minor things that can be replaced.
5. Find a Place to Stay
Even if your house is salvageable after a fire, you will still likely need to find a temporary place to stay until the necessary work is done to restore the house to its former glory. See if you can stay with a friend or family member, or even book yourself a hotel so that you can gather your thoughts and overcome the trauma of the fire. Make sure you have long-term plans in place after you have had a chance to cool down for you to know where to go and what to do until you can sort out your living arrangements.
6. Take Time to Process
Having your house destroyed in a fire is an incredibly traumatizing event. Despite the fact that there is so much to do and take care of immediately after the fire, you should still take some time for yourself so that you can process what happened and get over the shock of it all. Make sure you seek any medical care you need and give yourself a break so that you can act logically and figure out what your next steps can be.
There is nothing worse than having the place you call home destroyed by a fire. If you ever find yourself in such a situation, you must act rationally so you can make the best of a bad situation. Remember to get in touch with all those who live on the property and grab your valuable possessions after the firefighters give you the green light to go back inside. Last but not least, make sure you take some time to yourself so that you can recover from the shock and trauma of the fire.
