A Jewish Journal reader who lost her home in the fires and prefers to remain anonymous, introduced The Journal to public adjuster Jack Weaver.
Public adjusters are independent insurance professionals hired by an individual to assist them with documenting and proving their loss. They help by maximizing the policy, expediting the process, and sparing clients some of the physical and emotional labor.
In 2017, when the Tubbs Fire ravaged Sonoma County, Weaver’s parents’ home and much of the community he grew up in were destroyed. So Weaver and his law firm, Welty, Weaver & Currie, partnered with a seasoned public adjuster to assist hundreds of families in navigating their insurance claims. Then in 2019, the Kincade Fire hit Weaver’s own house.
“I’ve been through this twice myself, I know what you’re feeling, I’m probably one of the few people who does,” Weaver told The Journal. “You will get through it. It seems like you never will in the moment, but we did get through it, and we’re stronger because of it.”
Weaver offered to share practical advice for anyone facing the long process of navigating insurance claims after losing their home to wildfire.
What are my first three steps after losing my home to wildfires?
Start immediately looking for a safe place to live for the foreseeable future. This process will likely be a minimum of 12 to 36 months.
File a claim with your insurance company. If you’re still evacuated, you don’t have to know if your house was lost or not.
Call the insurance company and say, “I believe my home was damaged or lost in the [Insert Name] Fire.” They will assign you a claim number, they will assign you an insurance adjuster.
Request a certified copy of the policy. Most people do not have a certified copy. It is the legally-bound and executed policy that is actually used in their case. Insurers are required by law to give that to you when you request it.
What home insurance basics do I need to know?
Although there are many different types of coverage, Weaver says that in general, you’re going to have your dwelling coverage. Most people will have some form of what’s referred to as “extended replacement cost” (ERC).
“For example, if you use up all your dwelling money and you still need more, it’ll say something like ‘you have 25% of the value of your Dwelling A coverage in ERC,’” Weaver said. “So if you have $1 million in coverage and you can prove that your loss is $1.3 million to rebuild your house, you have an extra $250,000 that is available to you. The insurance company will say, “okay, it is $1.3 million.” Note that this has to be incurred to trigger the ERC — you have to show them that you’re spending it. They will give you your Dwelling A Limits regardless of what you do (assuming they agree the loss exceeds those Dwelling A Limits).
What can I do in the meantime?
Go through your phone and collect photos and videos of every room and as many objects in your home as you can. The insurance company’s going to ask you to make a list of all your personal property. You can show these to the adjuster and say, “I had travertine flooring here, and 20-foot ceilings.” That goes a long way toward both jogging your memory and also proving to the adjuster the items you had and their value.
If you still have your home, walk through once a year and just record a video of it. Take your time, walk through the whole place.
“It sounds silly, but film everything,” Weaver said. “That can be incredibly helpful when you’ve lost your home and you’ve lost everything.”
If someone offers me cash or donations after a disaster, can that affect my insurance or FEMA benefits?
It can affect Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) assistance. If you’re getting federal aid, then funds you receive could potentially trigger some problems, so check with FEMA on that. But generally, on your insurance level, no. The insurer insured what you had and they have to pay you back what it would cost to replace those items — regardless of whether you are the beneficiary of some kindness from strangers.
What things should I avoid doing on social media during the insurance process?
Everyone should use appropriate caution when posting online. The insurance adjuster and the insurance company are keeping track of every word you say and everything you admit. They will, in the event that they get suspicious of anything, start looking deeper into things — and they’re entitled to do that.
How do I make sure I don’t leave coverage on the table?
“What I think is far more common [than denials] is people may not be maximizing their claims,” Weaver said. “For example, the insurer may take a position that you could maybe rebuild your house. You may have surge pricing where contractors charge more to build because demand is going up so high. Your adjuster will be using what are market-reasonable values for costs that could be three times higher when it comes time to actually build. It’s frequent to see insurers say, ‘it costs $5,000 for this cement pad.’ You tell them that you have a bid for $20,000 and can’t find a contractor to do it for $5,000.”
With the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire, Weaver is seeing people who have been dropped by their private insurer so they bought the California Fair Plan as their insurer. Oftentimes, people buy what are colloquially called “wrap policies.” Weaver says that if you read those wrap policies, they almost all uniformly exclude fire from coverage.
Where do you find a list of accredited public adjusters?
There’s a free resource called United Policyholders (https://uphelp.org) that has information on many different vendors, attorneys and public adjusters. Be advised that the laws are different in each state for public adjusters. Weaver always encourages clients that they think they can navigate the insurance claim process on their own, to do that.
“But the flip side,” Weaver says, “is that the insurance adjuster is adjusting for the insurance company, not for you. The insurance companies did not get big shiny buildings by overpaying claims.”
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