Fire and smoke damage: the days after

The fire is out, the building is standing, and the damage is only starting. Soot is acidic and slightly oily. On metal it begins corroding within days. On walls it bonds. In the air it moves through every gap, duct and plumbing chase — which is why a room the flames never reached can still smell of smoke a month later.

• Do not go back in until the fire department has cleared the building. Structural damage, a gas leak and live circuits are not things you can judge from the doorway.
• Photograph every room before anything is moved or cleaned, including the rooms that look untouched. Open cabinets and closets and photograph inside them.
• Do not run the furnace or the air conditioning. Soot sitting in the ducts will be pushed into every room in the building.
• If the power is off, empty the refrigerator and freezer and prop the doors open. Food spoiling in a warm building becomes a second, separate odor problem.
• Board or cover openings if windows, doors or the roof are open, and ask your insurer about securing the property. Most policies expect you to protect the building from further damage.
• Keep every receipt — hotel, meals, laundry, a lock, a tarp. Additional living expenses are usually reimbursable, but only with receipts.
• If you have to be inside, wear respiratory protection and gloves. Do not spend hours in soot without it.

A fire is almost always a water loss as well. Hoses put a lot of water into a building, and the drying is part of the same job.

Smoke residue is not dirt. Treating it like dirt is how it gets worked into the surfaces it has landed on.

• Do not wipe soot with a wet cloth or an all-purpose cleaner. Water and soot make a smear that sets into porous surfaces and pushes the smell deeper in.
• Do not use an ordinary vacuum or a broom. Fine soot goes straight back out into the air, into rooms that were clean.
• Do not use air fresheners, candles, or a machine bought online to cover the smell. It returns as soon as the masking agent is gone. Odor is a source problem.
• Do not eat food from the kitchen — including food in cans or jars that were exposed to heat — and do not use appliances whose wiring or gas line may have been affected.
• Do not wash clothing or textiles before they have been inventoried and photographed for the claim.
• Do not assume the damage stops at the room with the burn. Smoke follows the air, and the air went everywhere.

A fire is three separate problems in one building: what burned, what the smoke touched, and what the water did.

Smoke residue settles on horizontal surfaces first, then walls and vertical surfaces, then inside closets, drawers, cabinets and electronics. It works into upholstery, clothing, books, mattresses, and the back of the drywall in the room where the fire was worst.

The water is what makes it structural. Saturated drywall, soaked insulation and standing water in a basement all have to be dried on the same clock as any other water loss, and often the fire-damaged area has to be stabilized before it can be dried properly.

That is why the assessment has to look at all three, and why a fire job is scoped room by room rather than as one number.

A small kitchen fire with a working exhaust fan still puts smoke through a whole apartment. The room that smells is not always the room that burned.

Fire is the loss policies were written for, so this is usually the most straightforward claim of the four. The limits still exist, and they tend to be about what comes after the fire rather than the fire itself.

The contents inventory is the part people underestimate. A room-by-room list with photographs, brand names and rough ages gets a very different response from a paragraph saying “contents, approximately”.

Very little of a fire job is a do-it-yourself job. The part that genuinely is: the inventory and the receipts.