Hour one belongs to safety and clearance. Do not go back inside until the fire department releases the home, and take their guidance on what is off limits. Fires rekindle, structures weakened by heat and water fail without warning, and smoke residue is not safe to breathe for long. If anyone feels unwell, that is a medical issue first and a property issue second.
In Hemet, name your fire in the first hour, because the valley has two. If the fire was in your house, the order is board-up, the insurer call, and photographs of the soot gradient before anything is wiped. If the fire was in the hills and your loss is ash, photograph the vents, window tracks, and the HVAC filter as found: that entry record, dated against the fire's own timeline, is what an exposure claim is made of. Either way, nothing gets cleaned before it is documented.
The first calls, in order, are your insurer to open the claim, and a restoration contractor for board up if windows, doors, or the roof are open. Photograph everything you safely can before anything moves. Do not wipe soot, do not wash walls, do not run the furnace or air conditioning, and do not throw away damaged belongings before they are documented, even the ones that are obviously ruined.
By the end of the first day you should have three things: a claim number, a secured house, and a scheduled assessment. The assessment produces the written scope that everything else, the insurer's estimate, the cleaning plan, the rebuild timeline, is measured against. Keep every receipt from the first night onward; loss of use coverage reimburses from documentation, not memory.
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