It's an insurance claim — can you work with that?

First, stop the water

Before anything about the claim, stop the damage getting worse. Almost every policy expects you to, and the cost of reasonable temporary measures is usually part of what is being claimed.

That means a tarp, a board, a bucket, turning off a circuit that water is running near, moving what can be moved. If anyone is in danger, or there is a smell of gas, or water is anywhere near electrics, that is an emergency services call before it is anybody else's call.

Urgent damage is worth a phone call rather than a message. Water and structural problems get more expensive every day they wait, and a roof left open through one more night of rain becomes a ceiling, an insulation and a floor problem as well.

Photograph it before anything is touched

The claim is going to be decided by people who were not there, from evidence collected by people who were.

So photograph before you tarp, not after. Wide shots that show which house and which elevation, then close shots of the damage itself. Photograph the inside as well — stains, wet insulation, anything that came down. Note the date and the weather. Keep receipts for tarps, fans, a dehumidifier, a night somewhere else if the house was unusable.

If something has to be thrown out, photograph it first and, where you reasonably can, keep a sample. A piece of the failed material says more than a description of it.

Photograph before you tarp, not after.

How a claim actually moves

1. You report it

   To the carrier, promptly. Policies carry expectations about notice, and a long unexplained gap between the storm and the report is the kind of thing that gets questioned later.

2. An adjuster inspects

   They write a scope: a line-by-line list of what they believe it takes to put it back, priced from the software the industry uses. That document, not the phone call, is what the carrier is working from.

3. A contractor writes a scope too

   Independently, from what is actually on the roof and what the town will require to permit it. It is worth having someone there when the adjuster inspects, so that the same things get looked at.

4. The two get reconciled

   Where the contractor's scope includes something the adjuster's does not, that goes back with evidence — photographs, a code requirement, a manufacturer's instruction. This is the part people do not expect and it is ordinary.

5. Then the work is scheduled

   Once the scope is settled, the job runs like any other: written scope, permit, work, inspections, a final walk with a list.

The two scopes will not match, and that is normal

An adjuster is estimating from a standard and from what they could see on the day. A contractor is looking at a specific roof on a specific house with specific code requirements attached to it.

The usual gaps are predictable. Flashings that have to be replaced rather than reused once a section comes off. Ice barrier and edge details that current code asks for on new work but that the old roof never had. Ventilation that was wrong before the storm and cannot legitimately be put back the way it was. Damage that was hidden under the layer that got removed. A repair that cannot be matched because the material is no longer made, which raises a question about the rest of the slope.

None of that is an argument. It is a documentation exercise, and it is won with photographs and a citation rather than with volume.

What to be careful of after a storm

A bad storm brings people to the door who were not in the neighbourhood the week before, and some of them are fine and some of them are not.

Anyone offering to cover your deductible is offering you something that is not theirs to give, and it tells you what else they will be casual about. Anyone who wants to get on the roof before you have spoken to your carrier is doing you no favours. Anyone pressing you to sign on the doorstep, today, while the truck is here, is selling urgency rather than roofing.

Read anything you are asked to sign, particularly if it assigns your claim or your benefits to the contractor, or authorises work at whatever the insurer eventually approves. Those are real commitments and they are frequently signed on a clipboard in the rain. Take the document inside, read it dry, and sleep on it.

And apply the ordinary checks, which do not change because there was a storm: ask for the state registration number and look it up yourself, ask for a certificate of insurance from the agent with your name on it as certificate holder, ask for the scope and the payment schedule in writing before any money moves.

The roof has to be right regardless of who pays

An insurance claim decides who pays for what. It does not decide what the building code asks for, what the town will pass at inspection, or what a manufacturer requires for its material warranty to mean anything.

So the standard is not the adjuster's line items. It is the roof. Where those two differ, the difference goes back to the carrier as a documented item rather than quietly disappearing off the job — because the alternative is a roof built to a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet is not the thing that has to survive February.

If you are already in the middle of one of these and it has gone quiet, that is a phone call rather than a web page: (401) 405-8407.