Claim Types
The First 72 Hours After a Property Loss in California
What should you do in the first 72 hours after a property loss in California?
Document everything photographically before any cleanup begins, give the carrier written notice the same day, secure the property against further damage without disposing of damaged contents, hire your own licensed mitigation contractor (not necessarily the carrier’s preferred vendor), book ALE housing and keep every receipt, and start a contemporaneous claim journal that captures every conversation. The first 72 hours are when the documentary record gets built — or lost — and every step you take in this window either preserves or forfeits leverage you will need months later.
A property loss is any covered event — fire, smoke, water release, wind, falling object, theft — that damages your dwelling, contents, or both. The mitigation duty is the policyholder’s contractual obligation to take reasonable steps to prevent further damage after a loss; it is woven into every California property policy. Additional Living Expense (ALE) is the policy coverage that pays for temporary housing and incremental living costs when the property is uninhabitable due to a covered loss. Emergency mitigation is the bounded set of immediate work — board-up, water extraction, tarping, content drying, dehumidification — that prevents secondary damage; it is distinct from full restoration, which is the rebuild.
This playbook is sequenced the way the hours actually unfold. Most of it can be done by a competent homeowner without professional help, but the leverage created in this window is what professionals — public adjusters, attorneys — work from later if the claim becomes contested.
Hour 0 to 6: Safety, then documentation
Confirm safety. Before anything else: are people accounted for? Is the structure stable enough to enter? On fire claims, has the local fire department cleared the property for re-entry? On water claims, has electricity been killed at the panel? On smoke claims, are CIH-level air contaminants a concern? Safety drives every other decision; do not let documentation urgency override safety judgment.
Photograph and video everything before any cleanup. This is the single most important rule in the entire 72-hour window. Wide shots for context, mid shots for room layout, close-ups for evidence. Every room. Every elevation of the exterior. The contents of every closet, drawer, cabinet, garage shelf. Smoke residue on hard surfaces. Char patterns. Water lines on walls. Standing water. Roof damage from below and (where safe) from above.
Move the camera slowly so video can be paused into stills later. Modern phones embed timestamp metadata in EXIF; back up originals to cloud storage so the metadata is preserved when photos are forwarded to adjusters. Do this before you allow any contractor, family member, or remediation crew to touch anything beyond what is strictly necessary for safety.
The reason this rule is so absolute: damaged contents thrown to the curb before photography are gone. Adjusters work from what they see; what they cannot see, they will not pay for. A soot-stained couch documented in the living room becomes a covered contents loss; the same couch on the curb without a photograph is a story the adjuster has no obligation to credit.
Put the carrier on written notice the same day. Phone calls open files; written notices preserve them. Call the carrier’s claims line to open the claim and get a claim number, then send a written follow-up the same day — email is fine — that memorializes the date, time, and nature of the loss.
The written notice is short:
“On [date] at approximately [time], the property at [address] sustained [fire / water / wind / smoke] damage. The damage affects [scope summary]. I am notifying you under the policy’s notice-of-loss provision and will follow with photographic documentation and a contractor estimate. My claim number, as provided in our call today, is [claim number].”
Save the email; save the carrier’s reply. Under California Code of Regulations Title 10 §2695.5, the carrier must acknowledge communications within 15 calendar days. Most major-loss acknowledgments arrive within hours; the regulation is the floor.
Hour 6 to 24: Mitigation without overcommitment
Engage emergency mitigation — but only emergency mitigation. The mitigation duty is real and enforceable: failing to prevent further damage can give the carrier grounds to deny coverage on the secondary damage. Board up broken windows; tarp damaged roofs; extract standing water; start dehumidification before mold blooms. Do this within hours of the loss.
The trap to avoid is letting the emergency mitigation contractor convert the engagement into a full restoration contract before the carrier has weighed in. Sign a narrow, written authorization for emergency work — board-up, tarp, water extraction, drying — with an itemized rate sheet and a defined scope. Do not sign a “work authorization” that grants the contractor the right to perform full restoration. Do not sign an assignment of benefits (AOB) form that transfers your insurance proceeds directly to the contractor; AOB structures are common in restoration and almost always reduce policyholder leverage.
A licensed California restoration contractor will understand the distinction between emergency mitigation and full restoration. If the contractor pushes for an AOB or a full-scope authorization in the first 24 hours, that is a signal to use a different contractor.
You are not required to use the carrier’s preferred vendor. Carriers will offer (often firmly) to dispatch a contractor from their preferred-vendor or “managed repair” program. The pitch: faster response, direct billing to the carrier, no out-of-pocket on your side. The cost: that contractor works for the carrier on the carrier’s pricing schedule, which is rarely the same as the local market rate, and disputes that arise during the work tend to resolve in the carrier’s favor because the contractor wants future referrals.
Using your own licensed contractor preserves negotiation leverage. You pay the contractor; the contractor’s invoice goes into your file; you negotiate reimbursement against the carrier’s estimate. Carriers will sometimes argue you must use their vendor — that argument is generally not enforceable on a standard California property policy, where the policyholder retains the right to choose contractors.
Verify any contractor’s license through CSLB. California’s Contractors State License Board (cslb.ca.gov) maintains a public license-lookup database. Confirm the contractor holds the appropriate classification (B for general, C-39 for roofing, C-36 for plumbing, C-10 for electrical, C-21 for fire and water restoration in many markets). Verify the license is active and the bond is current. Five minutes here prevents months of contracting nightmares later.
Hour 24 to 48: Housing, content storage, and the file
Book ALE housing if displaced. If the property is uninhabitable, your policy’s Additional Living Expense coverage pays the increase in living costs above what you were paying pre-loss — temporary housing (hotel, short-term rental, comparable rental), food differential (the increase above your normal grocery line), pet boarding, and reasonable incidentals. ALE has limits and time caps that vary by policy; read the declarations.
The standard for ALE housing is comparable to what you had before the loss — comparable square footage, comparable location, comparable amenities. Carriers sometimes push policyholders toward smaller or less-equivalent housing on cost grounds; the policy language usually does not require you to accept it. Document why you chose the housing you chose: comparable rental listings in the area, school proximity for children, proximity to the property for ongoing claim work, pet policies. See our ALE documentation guide for the full playbook on what counts and how to keep receipts.
Save every receipt. Hotel folios, restaurant tabs, gas to and from the property, replacement clothing bought immediately because everything else is in the smoke-damaged closet, prescription replacements, pet boarding fees, parking, laundry. ALE recoveries leak heavily on undocumented expenses; the cure is paper.
Store damaged contents — do not dispose of them. This is non-obvious. The instinct is to clear the curb. The discipline is to store. Damaged contents are evidence; the adjuster’s eventual scope and depreciation analysis runs against the items themselves, not against a homeowner’s reconstruction from memory. A storage pod, a friend’s garage, a corner of the property — anywhere that preserves the items until the adjuster has inspected and the inventory is complete.
If local authorities require immediate disposal (post-fire ash, contaminated water-damaged materials, hazardous debris), photograph and inventory each item before disposal, keep the disposal receipts, and note which items were disposed of, when, and by whose order. This converts the “where is the item?” question (which the adjuster will ask months later) from a problem into an answer.
Start the contents inventory. Even a partial first-pass inventory is enormously valuable in the first 48 hours, while memory is fresh. Walk through each room and list what was there — make, model, age, approximate purchase date, replacement cost estimate. Photograph any receipts you can find. Pull credit-card statements going back 24 months for major purchases. The full inventory will take weeks; the first-pass list takes hours and anchors everything that follows. See our contents inventory guide for the full method.
Hour 48 to 72: The carrier engages
The first adjuster contact. Carriers typically dispatch an adjuster (staff or contracted independent) within the first 24 to 72 hours on a significant loss. The first contact may be a phone call to schedule the on-site inspection, or an in-person arrival, or both.
Be ready. Have your photographs accessible. Have the written notice you sent on file. Have the first-pass contents list. Have a brief written narrative of the loss. Be present for the inspection — do not let it happen as a “drive-by” or a partial walk-through. Walk the entire property with the adjuster. Take parallel photos of every area the adjuster photographs. When they pull out a moisture meter, write down the reading. When they call out a measurement, write it down. When they make a verbal statement — “we don’t pay for matching here” or “the contents will be handled separately” — write it down with the time.
Verbal commitments evaporate. Contemporaneous notes do not.
Ask three things in writing after the inspection: a copy of the scope (what they identified as damaged), a copy of their estimate when written, and the identities of any specialists (industrial hygienist, structural engineer, contents restoration vendor) the carrier intends to engage. You are entitled to know who is examining your loss and to receive their reports.
Start the claim journal. A dated log, kept by you, capturing every event from the moment of the loss forward. Format does not matter — a notebook, a Google Doc, a Notion page. Content does. Each entry is dated and times-stamped, names the people involved, summarizes what was said, and notes any commitments made or deadlines set. Save copies of every email and text in or alongside the journal.
The claim journal is the single artifact that makes a contested claim months from now navigable. Memory degrades; the journal does not. Adjusters change; the journal preserves what each one said. If the file escalates to a CDI complaint, an appraisal, or a coverage suit, the journal is the policyholder’s primary witness statement.
What not to do in the first 72 hours
Five expensive errors recur with enough frequency to enumerate.
1. Discarding damaged property before photography. Photograph first, dispose later. Always. Even if local authorities have ordered immediate cleanup, photograph and inventory before the items leave.
2. Signing an assignment of benefits. AOB forms transfer your insurance proceeds directly to a contractor. Once signed, the contractor — not you — controls the negotiation with the carrier. AOB disputes have produced years of litigation in California restoration claims, and the policyholder rarely comes out ahead. Sign a narrow emergency-mitigation authorization with a defined scope; do not sign an AOB.
3. Settling the contents claim early to “be done with it.” Carriers sometimes offer a quick contents payout — actual cash value, often steeply depreciated — in the first week, with a release attached. The release closes the contents claim permanently. Refuse the release tied to a partial payment; accept the partial payment without the release if it is offered that way; insist on full payment after the inventory is complete.
4. Taking adjuster verbal commitments at face value. “We’ll cover that, don’t worry.” “Matching is included on this carrier.” “Just submit what you can on the inventory, we’ll work with you.” None of these are binding unless they are in writing. Convert every meaningful commitment to email the same day: “Per our call this afternoon, you confirmed [X]. Please correct if I have misunderstood.”
5. Throwing away receipts. Every receipt. Every hotel night, every restaurant tab, every fan rental, every replacement purchase, every gallon of gas to and from the property, every parking fee. ALE and mitigation reimbursements are paid against documentation; documentation that does not exist is not paid.
When to bring in a public adjuster
Most homeowners can run the first 72 hours themselves. Professional representation becomes warranted when:
- The loss is large (six figures or more on dwelling, significant contents)
- The damage profile is contested by the policy form (smoke-only on the FAIR Plan, partial-loss matching, water with mold, fire with code-upgrade exposure)
- The carrier’s first contact is procedurally problematic (no adjuster assigned in 72 hours, refusal to put commitments in writing, demands for documentation that exceeds the regulations)
- The policyholder cannot be present for inspections or cannot run the documentation discipline required
A public adjuster is a state-licensed insurance professional who represents the policyholder — not the carrier — during a claim. California licenses public adjusters through the Department of Insurance; PA contingency fees are capped at 10% on losses caused by an event for which a state of emergency has been declared (California Insurance Code §15027). On non-disaster losses, the typical PA fee is 10–20%. Engaging a PA in the first week, on a loss profile that warrants it, is meaningfully cheaper than engaging one after the file has gone sideways.
For the decision framework on whether your specific loss warrants PA representation, see should I hire a PA? and our PA-vs-attorney decision framework.
Where the first 72 hours connects to the rest of the claim
Everything that follows — the proof of loss, the contents valuation, the ALE accounting, the appraisal-clause invocation if it comes to that, the CDI complaint if it comes to that, the coverage suit if it comes to that — runs on the documentary record built in the first 72 hours. Carriers know this. Adjusters know this. Public adjusters and attorneys know this. The policyholder who treats the first 72 hours as a documentation discipline rather than a panic recovers a meaningfully larger share of the policy benefits than the policyholder who does not.
For the broader sequence: see how to file a FAIR Plan claim for the procedural backbone (which generalizes well beyond the FAIR Plan), our contents inventory guide for the contents discipline, our ALE documentation guide for the housing and incidentals discipline, and our appraisal clause guide for the binding-amount mechanism if the valuation dispute escalates.
Read next
Common questions