I just had a big house fire

[Glenn Czulada]

I had a chimney fire (wood insert-unknown cause at this point), in my 6,000 sq ft house, on Monday.  The fire was confined to the roof area of the chimney but they had the hoses on at least 90 minutes.  There was smoke damage to everything down to the basement.  Water damage throughout the house to basement.  About 1/4th of the main roof is gone now because either it burned or has been cut away by quickie contractor who is now shoring it up to make sure it doesn't collapse on the house.  

Naturally it's been a CRAZY week.  My plate was already 100% full with work and now all these professional people have come into my life at warp speed.  I have tons of issues and will be making more decisions and figuring thing out more than I ever have in my life (and that's saying a lot).  The public adjustor called me and met me on scene within 4 hrs of the fire.  I met with him for an hour the next day and he gave me a great starters education.  I can absolutely see why I should have a professional on my side to represent my interests but I'm putting a big hold on that and trying to do it myself.   

So far it's like meeting the new girlfriend.  Everything is "wonderful" with all the people I'm meeting but I know it can get ugly.  There is lots of money flying around here.  The big loss adjustor threw out 650K to rip the house apart to studs and replace all kinds of structure.  

One of the big unknowns so far is what is going to happen to "contents".  Luckily the PA sales pitch educated my enough to not let them haul all my clothes, appliances and electronic away right away the first day.  I understand there are "3 values" to every item in my house.  So far I don't have a straight answer on how contents is going to be done.  My wife and I are trying to do our part by sorting through stuff and ServePro has been working pretty good in moving things around.  

Donegal is the insurer and we have plenty of insurance, I think too much, but that's a good thing at this point.  I couldn't be more happy with the first walk through of the big loss adjustor.  Rooms that I thought had minor damage he wanted to rip apart.  Tuesday his big loss contractor is coming to work on more finite structure estimate.  

I know about Xact and have a general sense of how this is done with my research so far, but there is much to learn to represent myself properly.  There will be 100,00's of thousands of dollars flying all around, but hundreds of thousands of 10's and 20's that I don't miss out on either.  

On a personal note, we were super lucky in scoring a beautiful quite acceptable townhouse 2 miles from house.  Lucky because we live in a somewhat rural area and this is very hard to find.  So at least we will be comfortable for the next year while this proceeds.  If anyone here wants to follow this and help me, it would be much appreciated to say the least!

Right now at this second my biggest question is the contents, because structure will go more slowly.