Smoke gets in your eyes...

... and your walls and your heating ducts.
Even when the fire is confined to one plastic storage tub in the basement.
We're headed this week to the home of a family in the Poconos who are now living in a motel after what seemed like a small fire earlier this month ruined their home.
Not much is burned. Much is ruined. An immense amount of smoke from the plastic tub and its contents got into the heating system. It also got into the walls, up every pipe and wire chase in the building. There's damaged insulation; the ducts for the hot air are coated in sticky stinking burned plastic. Clothing, furniture, carpets, walls, ceilings. An incredible mess.
The homeowner was dealing with his insurance company until they started acting like they were looking for a way out of their financial obligations to him.  Offering to just send his clothing for a wash and machine-cleaning his carpets as the solution to his problem struck him as not even close to adequate.  So a friend put him on to me, we got a Metro team there within four hours, he's now got us standing up for him.  More Thursday.

Popsicles, icicles, shoveling and heavy clothes ...

... these are a few of the things we love.

Wait, no, we don't.  And apologies to the Murmaids for paraphrasing their lyrics.
These are a few of the things we got, however, during Halloween Weekend here in northeast Pennsylvania. Really, you could have turned into a popsicle around here on Saturday. And while the icicles were minimal, they're the thing that's going to be a sign you've got the potential for a problem with ice damming.
Most homes aren't built with a heavy, waterproof roll of special material extending around the base of the roof upwards for three feet. Homes without it are more susceptible to ice damming than those with it.
An ice dam is simple.  Melting snow collects in a gutter that isn't working because it's clogged or full of frozen slush. In addition to spilling over and forming icicles, it also can back up. And when it does, it can back up UNDER your shingles and come into contact with the wood of your sheathing. From there it's a matter of time to cause rot and a matter of construction and luck whether it drips down onto your interior ceilings and walls, causing more damage.
That's the bad news.
The good news is that your homeowner insurance often covers ice damming. It's one more reason to read the insurance policy.
So don't shrug your shoulders and put the burden of repairs on your already stretched household budget. Call your insurance agent and ask if it's covered. If you get a response filled with bafflegab that amounts to either "no" or a token offer of a small amount of money, call in a public insurance adjuster. You may be unpleasantly surprised at what a real repair costs, including damage to the interior. You may be pleasantly surprised at how much more the public adjuster can get the insurance company to pay for.
Just something to think about next time you're admiring a seven-foot icicle hanging off your groaning (and probably pulled loose and bent) gutter. (That's covered too. :-)  )

Halloween vandalism: Yes, it's usually a covered peril

Halloween is upon us.  While most of it is just fun, many areas of the country have a tradition that Halloween is preceded by "Mischief Night" or "Goosey Night", which is given over to pranks and vandalism, some of it extensive and costly to repair.  Is vandalism covered by your insurance?
Stomping out a burning paper bag you discover on your front steps after the doorbell rings and finding out there's dog poop in it: That's a prank.
Getting eggs thrown at your car or house: That's vandalism, and damage from eggs is a bigger ticket item than you'd think, simply because it's so destructive at the molecular level that the paint has to be replaced.  There's often permanent discoloration. Trying to match the paint color is sometimes impossible. That means a new paint job for the car or the house, or new siding if it's damaged vinyl. Not cheap.
Most standard homeowner insurance policies cover vandalism. Call your agent, and, of course, if you don't like the answers you then get from your insurance company, call a public adjuster.
But don't forget that sometimes a little prevention is better than any cure. Damage from eggs usually requires the eggs to be in place a few hours.  It costs you nothing to park your car in the garage, nothing to check it last thing at night if you have to park outside, and nothing to shine a flashlight over your house before bed time to see if you've been "egged."
Now if they turn over your outhouse, that's another story. Fortunately, teenagers committing serious Mischief Night vandalism are not particularly inventive: eggs, spray paint, toilet paper in your trees, that's about the extent of the usual bag of tricks.
Good luck making it through Halloween. Next time we talk about when "No" from an insurance company really means you just have to try harder.

OK, somebody's $6,000 ahead. Next

Just got word the first insurance claim I ever put in for a homeowner produced a $6,000 settlement for roof and interior work. Not too shabby for something the homeowner didn't think would be covered by his policy.
It gets me one more claim down the road to independent status with my sponsoring company, Metro Public Adjusting. This is going to be good, useful, fulfilling work.
Let me ask again: Anyone else out there in northeast Pennsylvania want their insurance policy reviewed and their home inspected? I'm working on a New Jersey license, but I've got the time if you've got the need for that kind of money for home repairs.

When what you don't know will hurt you

Want to bet nobody knows if there's insurance?

My family had to move a couple of years ago because the local school system needed our Main Street property for expansion. It was OK; it wasn't the family homestead for 200 years, just a nice old house we bought and fixed up because it was, d'oh, close to the schools. It was time to go anyway.
The "new" house outside town we ended up buying was a 1980s split level with an interior-access-only basement. It had a sump pump in the corner, we were on the side of a steep, wooded hillside, and while there was no watermark showing, it was pretty clear there'd been issues with water. All fixed, we were assured. And, after all, it was a relatively small splatted bug on the windshield of our journey through life, so we bought the house, finished off the basement with due regard for the likelihood of some kind of incident, and a year later got a tropical storm that sent eight inches of rain down the hill.
And into our basement.  Hydraulic pressure is a powerful thing to watch in action. Hairline cracks in the 5,000-psi concrete floor about one-sixty-fourth of an inch wide, less than a human hair, were oozing water. Still, the sump pump was keeping up. We went to bed figuring it would be OK. The finished walls were built to deal with dampness and water in ways even Mike Holmes (Holmes on Homes) would have applauded, so an inch or two was no big deal.
Two things happened: The wire to the sump pump shorted out when the water reached a certain height. And it reached that height because power to the entire area was lost. Water was pouring up into the basement from the sump pump well.  It went hip deep in the three hours sleep we got that night.
We're covered, we thought: We had a sump pump endorsement on our homeowner's insurance policy. So we called up the agent and he sent out an adjuster and a few days later we got a densely worded three-page explanation in insurance adjuster bafflegab on why we weren't, even though we had a sump pump endorsement, getting any money from them.
That was somewhere beyond annoying. That's something that sticks with you for far too long, like the taste of a bad crab cake.  And that's why, when an opportunity to become a part of the public insurance adjustment industry came up, I was delighted to put on my knapsack, pick up my sword and my clipboard, and join the army.
Public insurance adjusting is simple.
Educate the homeowner on their individual insurance policy and what it covers and doesn't cover? Check. I'm there. I've taken courses, I've got a state license, I now know what I should have known a couple of years ago when my sump pump stopped working (I should have gotten something out of that, by the way, and if I'd known more, maybe I would have.)
Protect the homeowner? Oh, yes, fix bayonets, click ballpoints, and sound the rally, homeowners with insurance issues need protection. I'm proof of that. I lived through what I'm now trying to help others avoid.
Make some money? I can live with that, especially under the circumstances I operate within: If I don't get the job done for the homeowner, I don't get a dime. And when I do get my dime, it comes out of the insurance company. I get a warm shiver just writing that.

Bill Watson

I never knew all this was out there.  If I had, I'd have jumped ship away from journalism 30 years ago, when it was clear all we'd ever do in newspapers was make money by writing about people's tragedies and misfortunes and mistakes. This is more like my 17 years as a volunteer firefighter: The firefighter's reason for getting out of bed (at 3 a.m.) is to go save someone's property. The big difference is that as a part of the public insurance adjustment industry, I get paid.
"OK," you're saying, "Nice story, but what's it got to do with me?"  Three quick questions and you'll know if it has anything at all to do with you.
1. Are you a property owner? If you answer yes, next question:
2. Have you EVER read your copy of the homeowner insurance policy you get in the mail every year? Do you even know where it is? Quick: What's your deductible?
3. Do you really know if you are entitled to money if your roof leaks, your sump pump dies, your Christmas turkey burns up in the oven or your neighbor's tree falls on your garage?
If you don't like the answers (or absence of answers) you just came up with, a public insurance consultant WILL change your answers for the better. I'm available, and it's usually better to talk while nothing is going on than it is after you're awakened by a tree coming through the roof.   I'm in northeast Pennsylvania, easily reached.
If you're not in northeast Pennsylvania, contact the bigger company with which I'm affiliated, Metro Public Adjusting, to find a claims rep near you.
You paid for insurance coverage. Why not make sure you get what you paid for and take the stress out of dealing with claims while you're at it?

More pictures of Irene damage courtesy of USA Today.