Do Immediately After a House Fire
The first thing to do after a house fire is make sure everyone is out and call 911 if you haven’t already. Once the fire department has cleared the scene and declared the structure safe to approach, your next call is to a fire damage restoration company. Not tomorrow. Not after you’ve had time to process what happened. As soon as the fire marshal releases the property.
Understanding what to do after house fire is crucial for ensuring safety and minimizing damage.
Knowing what to do after house fire can prevent further complications and assist in recovery.
For more information on what to do after house fire, reach out to our team.
Every hour after a fire, smoke residue continues working its way deeper into surfaces, porous materials, and your HVAC system. Soot is acidic — it etches metal, discolors walls, and permanently stains materials the longer it sits. The damage that occurs in the 24 hours after a fire is often as significant as the fire damage itself. Fast action protects your property and protects your insurance claim.
Call 303-816-0068 the moment the scene is released. We respond immediately to fire damage emergencies in Lakewood, Pine, Conifer, Evergreen, Bailey, and the surrounding mountain communities — 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
Step One: Do Not Re-Enter Until Cleared
This is not a formality. Structure fires compromise building integrity in ways that aren’t always visible from the outside. Roof structures can be weakened. Floors above basements can be undermined. Walls can be structurally compromised while appearing intact.
The fire department or fire marshal will tell you when the structure is safe to enter. Wait for that clearance. What can happen is homeowners re-enter to retrieve belongings before clearance and encounter a structural failure, residual smoke in an enclosed space, or conditions that weren’t apparent from the doorway.
When you do enter — even after clearance — limit your time inside. Smoke residue in the air is a health hazard. If the structure has significant smoke damage, wear an N95 respirator and keep visits brief until professional air scrubbing equipment has cleared the air quality.
Step Two: Call Your Insurance Company
Report the loss to your insurance company as soon as possible — ideally the same day. Your policy has notification requirements and your claim clock starts from the date of loss. Early notification gives you access to emergency funds many policies provide for temporary housing and immediate needs.
When you call, have the following ready: your policy number, the address of the loss, a brief description of what happened, and whether the fire department responded. You don’t need a full damage assessment at this point — just open the claim.
What I’ve seen happen is homeowners wait several days to call their insurance company because they’re overwhelmed. That delay can complicate the claim. Some policies have specific timeframes for notification. Call as soon as you’re safe and have a moment to make the call.
Your insurance company will assign an adjuster. That adjuster works for the insurance company. They are not your advocate — they’re there to assess the claim on the insurer’s behalf. Having a restoration contractor with experience in insurance documentation working alongside you from day one matters more in fire claims than almost any other type of property damage claim.
Step Three: Call a Fire Damage Restoration Company
This call happens at the same time as your insurance call — not after. A restoration company with fire damage experience does several things in the immediate aftermath that directly affect both the extent of damage and the outcome of your claim.
Emergency board-up and tarping secures the structure against weather and unauthorized entry. A fire that burned through a roof or exterior wall leaves the structure exposed. If rain gets in before that opening is covered, you now have water damage on top of fire damage. Your insurance policy requires reasonable steps to prevent further damage — board-up is that step.
Emergency pack-out removes salvageable contents from the structure before soot continues to penetrate them and before the environment inside the structure causes additional damage. Contents left in a smoke-damaged structure continue absorbing odor and residue every hour they stay there.
Documentation from day one. What I’ve seen in the industry is fire claims where early documentation was poor — conditions weren’t photographed before cleaning started, damaged materials were moved without inventory, the scope of smoke penetration wasn’t assessed before air quality improved. That documentation gap creates problems when it’s time to settle the claim. We document everything before anything is touched.
Step Four: Secure Temporary Housing
If your home is uninhabitable — and most structures with significant fire damage are, at least temporarily — your homeowner’s insurance policy almost certainly includes Additional Living Expenses coverage, often called ALE. This covers reasonable costs for temporary housing, meals, and other living expenses above your normal costs while your home is being restored.
Contact your insurance company or adjuster about ALE coverage immediately. Don’t wait until you’ve already spent money on a hotel. Get authorization for the coverage so you understand what’s available and how to submit expenses.
Something that can happen is families staying with relatives to avoid the hassle of the ALE process, then discovering weeks into a restoration that they could have been in a proper rental the whole time. Use the coverage your policy provides. It exists for exactly this situation.
Step Five: Don’t Clean Anything Yet
This is one of the most important things to understand in the immediate aftermath of a fire. Do not start cleaning smoke residue, soot, or fire-damaged materials before a restoration professional has documented conditions and assessed what cleaning methods are appropriate.
Soot requires specific cleaning approaches depending on the surface and the type of fire. Dry soot from a fast-burning fire responds to different methods than wet soot from a slow smoldering fire. Protein residue from a kitchen fire — one of the most difficult fire residues to remediate — is nearly invisible on surfaces but produces powerful odor and requires specific enzymatic treatments. Using the wrong cleaning method on the wrong type of residue can set the residue permanently into the surface.
A common thing seen in the industry is well-meaning family members or cleaning services wiping soot off walls before the restoration company arrives, using products and methods that push the residue deeper into the surface rather than removing it. What looks like cleaning is actually making the problem worse and harder to fix.
Beyond the cleaning chemistry issue, premature cleaning destroys documentation. Once surfaces are wiped, the original condition is gone and the claim documentation is compromised.
Step Six: Protect Undamaged Areas
If parts of your home were not directly affected by fire or smoke, steps can be taken to protect them from secondary smoke migration. Close doors between affected and unaffected areas. Turn off the HVAC system if it hasn’t been assessed — a running HVAC system can distribute smoke residue throughout the entire structure, including areas that had no direct fire or smoke exposure.
This is one reason the HVAC system is one of the first things we evaluate in a fire damage assessment. A common thing seen in the industry is significant smoke damage in rooms far from the fire because the HVAC system was left running after the fire was extinguished, pulling smoke-laden air through the ducts and depositing residue throughout the system and every room it serves.
If the HVAC system ran during or after the fire, assume it needs professional cleaning and assessment regardless of whether the rooms it serves show visible smoke damage.
Step Seven: Inventory What You Can Safely Document
While you’re waiting for the restoration company and adjuster, if it’s safe to be near the structure, begin a mental or written inventory of what was in the home. This is the foundation of your contents claim.
You don’t need to go inside to start this process. Think room by room. What furniture, electronics, clothing, appliances, personal property, and valuables were in each space. Receipts, photos from before the fire, credit card statements showing purchases — any documentation of what you owned before the fire supports the contents portion of your claim.
What I’ve seen happen is homeowners struggle months later to remember what was in a spare bedroom or a storage area, and the contents claim ends up underpaid because items weren’t documented. Start the inventory process as soon as you’re able, while the memory is fresh.
What Happens When We Arrive
When we respond to a fire damage call in Lakewood, Pine, Conifer, Evergreen, or Bailey, the first actions are assessment and stabilization — not cleaning.
We evaluate the structural condition. We assess the extent of fire, smoke, and water damage from firefighting. We identify the type of smoke residue present. We document everything with photographs and written notes before anything is touched. We board up any openings and tarp any roof breaches. We assess whether contents should be packed out and begin that process if appropriate.
Then we sit down with you and explain what we found, what the restoration process looks like, what the realistic timeline is, and how we’ll work with your insurance adjuster throughout the process. You understand exactly what’s happening and why at every stage.
We hold IICRC Triple Master Certification including Fire and Smoke Restoration certification — the highest credential available in this field. That certification means our assessment, our documentation, and our restoration work meet the highest published technical standard in the industry, which matters when your adjuster is reviewing the claim scope.
The IICRC’s standards for fire and smoke damage restoration are available at https://www.iicrc.org/page/IICRCStandards.
Call 303-816-0068 the moment the fire marshal releases your property. We respond immediately, 24 hours a day. The actions taken in the first hours after a fire determine a significant amount of what can be saved and how the claim settles. Don’t wait.
