Dan, and anyone else affected by recent weather disasters, my deepest sympathy.
At the risk of coming across as Captain Obvious, I want to share some the
lessons I learned from our own flood experience 15 months ago.
1. Physical structure.
a. Move out the salvageable books/pictures/dishware/furniture etc.
b. Rip out the drywall. Even if it was only wet up to 2-3 feet, take it
down. This makes it easier to do a neat job putting in new, it helps the drying
and mold mitigation process, and it gives access to electrical wires and
outlets that will need to be replaced.
c. Spray everything inside with special mold mitigation mixtures. Or
pay big bucks and have a competent outfit like ServPro do the job. A 50/50 mix
of Clorox and water works well on concrete & cinder block walls.
2. Personal items.
a. U-haul and others have portable storage pods, 4x8x8 feet or so. We
had 4 of those in our driveway to store salvaged items so they were out of the
way of the initial cleaning and then the rebuild. And much more convenient than
storage lockers 1-5 miles down the street or across town.
b. Dry and clean and dry. Try not to store wet items that will mold.
c. Inventory! Itemize what you have, what you lost.
3. Financial considerations.
a. FEMA will help, assuming one is in a Federally Declared Disaster
Area.. They will cover some/all of the expense of replacement lodging while you
are out of your home. They will cover other expenses. But they will need to
know you need help. There should be a local process for information sharing
which should be putting out when/how to go online and register with FEMA. Some
of the key questions in the FEMA sign-up process: “Are you able to live in your
home?” “If not, where are you? How long do you anticipate being in this
temporary location?”
b. Keep receipts!
c. See 2-c above. Itemize, inventory.
d. Insurance may cover some losses. If you can prove the loss.
e. Loss that isn’t covered by insurance or FEMA (or donations from
United Way, church groups, etc) may be taken as a deduction on next year’s
Federal Income tax. If you can document. Inventory, itemize, recreate purchase
records!
In my case we did have flood insurance on the house (but nothing on the
contents). The insurance adjuster said that we had suffered $125,000 damage to
the house, our policy was capped at $85,000. Our deductible loss for tax
purposes was therefore $40,000. Which helped. And the adjuster's itemization of
the structural damage apparently sufficed for IRS.
Oh, back on the notion of “salvageable” - in the rush and chaos of getting
stuff out of our house, too many of our things went into the trash pile at the
curb which we could well have salvaged. Including not just personal items, but
things like the wooden baseboards which were ripped out to get the drywall out.
With a little care, those baseboards could have been removed intact and cleaned
up. Laminates, plywoods, need to go, but solid wood can be cleaned.
All the best to your and your neighbor and cousin and everyone else!
Stan
> On Sep 5, 2021, at 11:47 AM, Daniel J. Matyola <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On Tuesday, President Biden will visit Manville, NJ, the town where I grew
> up. It has been hit the hardest of any locality in the Northeast by
> hurricane Ida.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9M5mz5wQZo&t=36s
>
> There was a lot more rain here this week than we had during Superstorm
> Sandy, and the Delaware, Raritan, Passaic, and Millstone Rivers crested a
> couple of feet higher than in Sandy or any previous tropical storm. The
> flooding inland was much worse, although the lack of high winds meant there
> were lower and fewer storm tides, largely sparing the Jersey Shore areas.
>
> Sandy was worse for us because we lost power for 8 days, whereas the lack
> of high winds with Ida spared us that (although other areas did lose
> power). There were 3 explosions of homes and a restaurant in our area, and
> the resulting fires were uncontrolled because the flood waters denied
> access to emergency vehicles. There are a number of homeless families in
> the three towns surrounding us.
>
> Our home was unscathed, but our next door neighbors had three feet of water
> in their basement and suffered thousands of dollars in damages which
> insurance will not cover. They are now in a hotel because of the mold and
> odor from the basement that permeates the entire building.
>
> Earlier in the week, I was drafting a contract for the sale of a commercial
> building in Manville owned by my cousins. Thursday there was three feet of
> water in the building, and it was isolated by flood waters for 36 hours.
> Yesterday, I helped my cousin and his grandkids tear up the wet carpeting
> before it could get moldy, and we turned off the gas and electric to the
> HVAC. There is a lot of drywall that is no longer dry and must be
> replaced. The transaction is up in the air at this point, in part because
> the buyer had a retail store up the street and also suffered substantial
> damage.
>
> Our family was extremely lucky, but there is devastation all around us.
>
> Dan Matyola
> *https://tinyurl.com/DJM-P entax-Gallery
> <https://tinyurl.com/DJM-Pentax-Gallery>*
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