My house burned down

[rcsoundn1]

Crazy i know but its true. Wednesday afternoon my house suffered a fire in the attic that has taken my home. It was started by lightning that struck a tree, went to a fence, arced to a gutter, passed through metal screening on our porch, through nails into the attic. Blew trim clear off the house. I dont know what insurance will say yet, or wether its a total loss or not. My wife, dogs and i are all safe and staying with her family. This was our 1st home. There was a good ammount of personal loss, but i was able to save some things before the water damage ruined it all. Lost stuff to the fire itself as well. I was in shock for a while, and im not sure it all has realy settled in yet. I am doing my best to keep my focus. The insurance company puts a lot on you to get things rolling, and if you let them they will blow you off. So if anyone knows a great contractor that has fire damage in SE georgia let me know. They story still sounds fake to me. Anyone been through this before?

[ELVA164]

I feel like anything I say here will sound dumb and incongruous with what you're going through, but I'm terribly sorry to hear that. It's the same old thing but of course the most important part is the family is okay. Hopefully your dealings with the insurance company aren't too draining; You'd think the fact that you pay them money would incentivize them not to suck so hard...

[BECKSTER]

Prayers going out to you and your family.
I hope the recovery is swift.

[george graves]

That sucks dude. I've know some people that have gone through something like that and it takes time to get everything back to semi-normal.

[rturbo 930]

Wow. Best of luck rebuilding. I find it amazing that the electricity from the strike was able to travel from a fucking tree all the way to your attic. Stories like this are why I'd like to build a house out of nothing but concrete, steel, stone, and glass.

[Das Delfin]

Sorry for your loss. Glad you're okay. Hope the car is okay ;) It's going to be one day at a time for a while. Good luck with insurance. Look into a lawyer if need be. It sucks to have to deal with insurance screwing you right when you just lost your home but now more than anything is the time to focus

[dsm2002]

My thoughts are with you, mate.

We had a similar thing where we awoke at 3:00am to find the house on fire. Electrical issue. It is one of the most despairing things to close the door and walk away from your house on fire, but I am forever thankful that the family and pets all walked away safely.

I hope you sort it out with the insurance company and get your life back on track quickly.

[BobombETA]

Wow, so very sorry to hear! The family is safe and that is what matters most. One thing I heard about dealing with claims adjusters is to be as specific as possible. Don't just say, yeah we had "a toaster oven, a blender, and a mixer in the kitchen." Tell them specifically what models or find comparable models listed on sites.... I read it in a reddit thread some time ago.

https://upvoted.com/2016/02/04/list-the-most-mundane-fcking-bullshit-and-other-secrets-from-a-former-insurance-claims-adjuster/

[agent]

Glad you and the family are okay; hopefully the insurance folks are easy to deal with.

[forwardlookguy]

Sorry to hear that man. But like others have said, don't let the insurance adjuster talk you down on anything. We had a similar situation when a pipe burst in our kitchen. Destroyed everything, cabinets, hardwood floors, etc. They were going to give us $4000 for it. When talking to contractors, it became apparent that wasn't going to cut it.

Blue Lake Group in Stockbridge helped us immensely. They have a former adjuster on their staff and he (Brent) came out with the adjuster and gave a real estimate. Allstate wound up paying us close to $15,000 to redo our kitchen. We had a really good experience with them, not so much Allstate...many words were exchanged with many different reps and CSR's. The whole ordeal took about three months though so hopefully it won't be like that for you.

Hope that is of some use to you. I live near Newnan so let me know if I can be of any assistance.

[Cephas]

Geez. That's a nightmare. I'm glad that you were out safe and your family was out safe.

[ahrensNW]

I'm glad you and your family are safe.

Insurance adjusters are basically satan, so don't budge an inch on what you value stuff at.

[forwardlookguy]

Also, save receipts related to any expenses as a direct result of this. We couldn't cook any meals in our kitchen when everything happened. I called Allstate, and they reimbursed me all of the meals we had to eat out and some other expenses as well. Just don't get too extravagant! We ate pretty cheap as to not push our luck.

[Northern]

My house/apartment had a kettle catch on fire on top of the stove (Still not sure how this happened) back in 2012. Not nearly this serious, but tenants' insurance was good for almost everything (minus the appliances, which I don't understand)

We had some place to stay already afterward, but they paid for a nice new bed/boxspring/sheets in full, as well as some living expenses from directly after, Gutted the place and professionally cleaned all of our belongings and moved everything, then paid most of the value of what we lost after we filled out a massive spreadsheet of everything else we owned that they wrote off.

[markseven]

Aw man, so sorry to hear about this. As others have mentioned, thankfully there was no loss of life or injury.

Hang in there and keep us posted.