Insurance & you: A love hate relationship.

As part of preparedness month I thought I would start off with something that should be first on the list for owners and renters alike--insurance. I know insurance can be convoluted and the legalese is enough to make your head spin, but this is your first and oftentimes best line of defense to ensure (get it?) that you're protected when something happens.

http://wainassoc.com/2013/01/10/right-insurance-agent-could-save-you-thousands/

Before going further you need to click the link above and read the story, you'll be outraged but know situations like the one Mr. Crea faced happen more often than you think...

Ok, so now I need you set aside the anger you're feeling and know that you can avoid ending up in a similar situation by following some simple steps:

Review your policy. Don't have one? Well this is a great time to do some research on the types of events your community is prone to and to talk to an insurance agent. If you already have a policy, read it through, how much coverage do you have? What's covered, what isn't? Confused by something? Call your agent--be a pain, but don't stop until you understand what you're paying for. Insurance should give you piece of mind, not keep you up at night because you're unsure of what's covered and what isn't.

Resources to help get you started:

• floodsmart.gov (lots of useful and easy to understand info)
• http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/08/homeowner-insurance.asp (a beginner's guide)
• [insert your insurance agent's phone number here]

Ok, so you're feeling good, you understand your policy, you and your insurance agent your buddies, so what do you do when something happens? 

Contact your insurance company as soon as possible. Because you've kept all of your important documents in a secure place, referring to them will be a breeze when talking to your agent, a claims adjuster, or whomever is taking down your information. They are going to ask you questions about the damage, the losses, etc... you can help this process along by...

Compiling a list of everything that's been damaged. A good idea is to keep a disposable camera in your preparedness kit so that you can catalogue the damage to your personal property for insurance purposes, the ideal is to capture everything on video if possible. The urge to start cleaning up will be great, but resist; don't begin cleaning until everything has been captured on film and you have an inventory of the damaged items, and most importantly an adjuster has gone over it with you. This will ensure that you get as much as possible in the long run. However, if you have questions about whether you need to wait for an adjuster before beginning cleanup, ask your insurance company. 

Make sure your adjuster can contact you. There is a lot of uncertainty following an event, if you have to make a temporary move, make sure your insurance company knows how to get a hold of you.

Have broken windows? Is your roof leaking? Make any temporary repairs that will prevent further damage to your home, and keep the receipts. Now is not the time for permanent repairs, you just want to keep further damage from taking place. You need to wait for your insurance to weigh in on what's covered and what's not before permanent repairs can begin.

Which brings me to the most important step: Breathe. This is not going to be a quick process, be prepared to spend a lot of time on the phone and revert to step 1. The more you know about your policy, the better you can be at advocating on your behalf...knowledge is power.

Optional Step

If you feel like you didn't get a fair shake by your insurance company, you have the option of hiring a public adjuster, but beware they come with fees and whole set of issues that may impact just how much money you have to repair / rebuild when all is said and done. If you're interested in learning more, this provides a good overview. 

So the dust has finally settled and you have your check in hand, Let the permanent repairs begin! Can you see that glimmer? That's light my friend...but before you go hiring the first contractor that offers you their services, remember fraud sucks (while not a step, it's important to reinforce that). Follow these tips for finding a reputable contractor and make sure you sign a contract that works for you and not just your contractor.

So there you go...a little primer on insurance and disasters. Please do not use this as an authoritative guide to the steps you should follow...this is designed to get you thinking about the subject and I encourage you to read up on what policy works best for you. 

Consensus on Clean up

One of the greatest assets individuals and communities can have before, during, and after a disaster is the knowledge of what happens next, and the confidence to act on that knowledge. Unfortunately, the current state of preparedness in many communities is far from that ideal and as a result, leaves room for ambiguity around key issues that mark turning points in an individual and community's recovery.

A great opportunity to clear up some of this ambiguity while working to set and manage homeowner expectations is to, as a response community, agree and adhere to standards around the work done on behalf of impacted homeowners i.e. mucking/gutting/debris removal/sanitizing/mold treatment/etc. By gaining consensus on this issue, standards can be proactively communicated as a part of preparedness initiatives to help bring both homeowner and responding groups (established or spontaneous) onto the same page when engaging in cleanup activities. Not only that, but by actively pushing cleanup standards, homeowners don't have to wait around for someone to help them, they can quickly and aggressively begin the process with friends, family, or spontaneous volunteers from the community and work to a standard that is applied across the country...in essence, working to create more resilient communities.

Is it done?

Is it Done?
I would bet that if you were to show the above photo to different people with different levels of experience in response, homeowners included, and asked what needed to happen next, you would get a variety of answers. Not to say that they would be wrong, but finding a definitive answer would not be an easy task because until recently no checklist existed, there was no "how to" guide endorsed by a coalition of organizations or FEMA to help define the process. Given that more than a handful of organizations have been doing this type of work for years spanning hundreds of disasters, one would think that an authoritative guidebook would've been written before now, if for no other reason than to give homeowners a chance at a full recovery without such reliance on response organizations. I say this because responding non-profits can't serve everyone, and after a certain point, they begin to pack up taking with them their know how and experience, leaving the remaining work to fewer and oftentimes less experienced resources. What remains is often a mash up of homes taken to various stages of "completeness," and a lot of grey area around how best to move many of them forward.

In recognition that the resources and surge of Volunteer power are not inexhaustible, the National VOAD Housing Committee has created guidelines to formalize an understanding of what completing the steps involved in clean up means. This was done to bring some uniformity to how we talk and act in the field on behalf of impacted homeowners and renters.

Go here for the download

While the creation of the above guidance documentation is a good start, I believe packaging these guidelines with documentation and other relevant resources should be used as a part of community preparedness programming; preparedness is about more than having food and water, it's about having the knowledge and understanding of what happens next. 

The goal is to ensure that all homeowners and responding groups have a clear understanding of expectations around what the different phases of cleanup are to mitigate the guesswork so that consistency can be created in the work done on behalf of impacted homeowners.

In the post, 'Disaster Response in the Digital Age' I talk about the need for the creation of a standardized data set so that information can flow freely between the proprietary software platforms being utilized during response. I believe the creation of this guidance document is an important first step, because without consensus around the definitions of cleanup activities, getting consistency in data collection and tracking, the first step in data set standardization, isn't feasible.