4 Ways to Protect Your Business After Fire Damage – Board Up Services
Fire damage at your place of business can be extremely traumatizing. Fires, regardless of how big and small they are, take some time for you to recover from. After you feel better and more capable of making decisions, there are a fair few of them which you’ll have to make to protect your business after fire damage.
Fire damage causes an insane amount of material and financial loss. However, the worst part of fire damage for owners is not knowing what to do next or ways to further protect their business. Look no further because we have compiled a list of ways to protect your business after fire damage.
1. Take Steps to Prevent Further Damage
When you deal with fire damage, you will likely hire someone to take care of the damages. If you call in a professional who only fixes the damages at the surface, you can deny them coverage for the additional damage it may create. It’s the professional’s job to protect you against all the ways that your structure may have. If any additional damage occurs after the professional tries to fix your place of business, then you can refrain from paying them and use their previous encounter as a claim. You won’t have to keep paying for damages that occur due to a professional’s negligence.
2. Contact Your Insurance Company
After the flames die down, one of the most imperative things you need to do is call your insurance company. You should report your loss immediately so that they can refer you to a plan that you may follow. Call your insurance company as soon as possible so that you can receive compensation as quickly as possible. The sooner you can get compensation, the sooner your business will get right back on track. Your insurance company will send an adjuster to assess what damages the fire has created. They’re going to take inventory of everything so that they are aware of the level of loss and offer you the exact compensation.
You can also start looking on the internet about how the claims process works, so you’re better prepared for it. If you feel like you need someone to explain to you, more often than not, you may contact your insurance claims processor and, they’ll walk you through the process. The insurance company doesn’t just cover the direct damages caused by the fire, but rather, they cover any restoration damage that you may need to cover.
3. Document the Damage
Once you’ve called your insurance company, they might take a while to show up and assess the damage. During this time, you should try to document the damage in your business with as much detail as you possibly can. Remember to never do this all on your own or before the authorities declare that your business is safe to re-enter. You can take the following steps to thoroughly assess your business without hitting a wall:
- You should start little by little. Break down your entire floor plan into little parts so you can tackle all of them. Start at the front door and then move your way in. You don’t want to get overwhelmed altogether, which is why you should take a picture of the smallest ventures first.
- Take timed breaks. It’s not easy to go through the wreckage of all that your business was and should be. Pushing yourself to go through things because you need to get with the work will only take a mental and emotional toll on you.
- Talk to a contractor or a professional who has experience with fire-related problems, especially when it comes to structure-related damage. Doing this helps you know how much money you should be getting from the insurance company. The insurance company will also have their quotes from contractors, who they work with, so you should be good to go.
- Choose a medium of documentation that fits you and describes the damage in detail. If you can get the most details out of pictures, take several of them, then take videos and even write up some of the damages you may witness so you can commit them to memory.
Make sure you also have receipts of all the exchanges and repairs you make when your business is recovering. You can ask for compensation for many of these expenses in your insurance claim as well. To do this, however, you must document your changes.
4. Call Your Accountant
You’ll have faced a very significant financial loss with the fire, so it’s necessary now that you get on top of your finances and accounts. You will need to discuss the expenses your business will need to make so that it can keep running with your accountant so they can inform you about how your finances are looking. Your accountant can also help you come up with a plan to keep your business afloat until everything can go back to normal.
The compensation from your insurance company may take some time, which is why you need to understand how your finances currently look. Your accountant can also inform you if there’s any way that you can file for a financial advance as you wait for the compensation.
For more information on steps after fire damage, please contact us at www.911restorationseattle.com
