Is Fire Damage Covered by Insurance?

Fire can be devastating and when it strikes, it can tear through large areas quickly. When a fire damages your home, the result can be a total loss of the property. This can be devastating to your finances if you have to start again, literally rebuilding from the ground up.

Fortunately, fire damage is usually covered by insurance, and working with a professional fire damage restoration company will help you restore your property to its pre-fire condition.

Fire Damage Is Usually Covered

Insurance coverage is specifically focused on helping people deal with accidental damage to their property. This includes many types of fires, such as electrical fires, cooking fires, and more. As a result, insurance will often cover common fire damage to your:

• House
• Personal property
• Outbuildings
• Automobile

Damage to the house is most often covered by homeowners insurance policies. There may be a limit to the amount of coverage, but often it can be up to and including the full cost of rebuilding the house.

Personal property coverage is typically included in homeowners insurance policies. The amount of coverage varies, and there may be specific documentation requirements for expensive property (see below).

Outbuildings might require a specific policy rider, and it’s important to check your coverage when you buy a house with substantial outbuildings or add a valuable outbuilding to your property.

Damage to your car in a fire might be covered under automobile insurance, specifically comprehensive coverage. However, it might also be included in homeowners insurance, especially if you have umbrella coverage.

Commercial Fire Damage Is Usually Covered

In addition to personal property, commercial insurance policies also cover fire damage. Items covered by insurance can include:

• Commercial buildings
• Inventory, equipment, and fixtures
• Company vehicles
• Business interruption

Damage to your commercial buildings is typically covered by insurance. These days, however, it is increasingly common for there to be strict limits on the amount of coverage for fire damage.

In addition, commercial fire insurance will also likely cover any losses to inventory, business equipment, and fixtures added to your commercial buildings.

Commercial vehicles are more likely to be covered than personal vehicles. With personal vehicles, people often carry the minimum liability insurance, but commercial vehicles as an investment are more likely to have comprehensive insurance.

Finally, commercial fire damage policies may pay you for business interruption. This can help cover penalties you might owe because you missed contracted deadlines, and may help pay the salaries of employees until you can get your business running again.

Situations Where Insurance Might Not Cover Fire Damage

Although fire damage is typically covered by insurance, there are some situations where it might not be. You may not be able to get insurance to pay for fire damage because:

• Specific exclusions in your policy limit this coverage
• You did not fix a known issue
• The fire was due to negligence on your part
• The fire was ruled an arson
• You don’t properly document the fire or your losses

Specific Exclusion

Sometimes your insurance policy might explicitly exclude fire damage or certain types of fire damage. The most common exclusion these days is wildfire damage. In certain fire-prone areas, wildfire damage coverage has been separated from the rest of a homeowners insurance policy. Wildfire damage coverage might not be obtainable, might have strict limits of coverage, and/or be prohibitively expensive.

You should have been informed whether fire damage was excluded from your policy, but it’s important to check your policy to make sure.

Known Problem Not Fixed

Sometimes, an inspection of your property could reveal serious fire hazards. These hazards might make a fire more likely to start on your property or spread quickly, increasing the amount of damage caused by a fire.

When these issues are identified, either by your insurance company or by another home inspector, you should address them. Failure to address them might lead to insurance denying coverage for a fire, even if the issue isn’t conclusively linked to your fire.

Negligence

In some cases, your insurance company might deny coverage if it concludes that your negligence was a significant contributing factor to a fire.

This is similar to the factor mentioned above, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be an issue that inspectors identified. For example, consider an outlet that gets hot when used and potentially even sparks and creates small fires. If you fail to repair the outlet or repair it but have repairs done by someone other than a licensed electrician, insurance might decline coverage for the fire.

Other times, neglecting property maintenance could lead to non-coverage of fire damage. For example, failure to clean lint out of your dryer vent for a long time can clog it and cause a fire. In this case, your insurance company might decide not to cover fire damage.

Arson

Fire damage from accidental fires is much more likely to be covered than damage from intentional fires.

Technically, your insurance policy might state that arson is covered as long as you aren’t involved in the arson in any way: in other words, you didn’t set the fire or have someone else set the fire. From a practical standpoint, though, insurers are so concerned about fraud that they might be reluctant to cover damage from any fire ruled arson, especially for commercial properties.

Lack of Documentation

Another situation that can make it hard to get compensation for fire damage is if you haven’t properly documented your property, the damage, or the necessary repairs.

If you have very expensive individual pieces of personal property, it’s important to let your insurance company know. Otherwise, they might not want to cover the cost of your newly installed $20,000 entertainment system, for example. The claim that the evidence of the system’s existence burned in the fire, including any receipts, is too convenient for fraudsters. Make sure you let your insurance company know about any expensive pieces of personal property you want covered, including jewelry, antiques, musical instruments and electronics.

In addition, it’s important to document the extent and type of fire damage. Get good pictures of where the fire burned and the extent of smoke spreading through the property. Once you start getting fire damage restoration, make sure to document each step of the process.

Trust RestorePro Reconstruction for Fire Damage Restoration

If your home has experienced extensive fire damage, you need a restoration company you can trust to help you get your life or business back to normal. With locations across North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee, RestorePro Reconstruction is the leading fire damage restoration company in the region with more than 30 years of experience providing restoration services after a disaster. We offer 24/7 emergency services, so we can be at your home immediately after the fire to start the restoration process. We can handle every stage of restoration, from the initial board-up of the property to an evaluation of the damage to reconstruction of the building and putting the final touches on paint and trim.

RestorePro also has extensive experience working with insurance companies. We can handle this part of the process for you. We know what documentation insurers need, and we can make sure to document the full extent of the damage and every step of the repair process. You won’t have to worry about not getting damage covered because you didn’t document it properly.

To learn how RestorePro can help you get compensation for your fire damage, please contact us today.