Water damage checklist
The First Hour: what to do when water gets into your home
Water damage is a clock, not an event. Mold can begin to grow in 24 to 48 hours, and most of what decides how big the repair gets — and how much of it your insurer pays for — happens in the first hour, before anyone with equipment arrives. This is that hour, in order.
Water still running, or anyone unsafe? Stop reading and call. A person answers our emergency line, day or night.
Before anything else: is it safe to be in there?
- If the ceiling is sagging or bulging, get everyone out of the room and stay out. It is holding water.
- If water has reached outlets, cords, a breaker panel or a furnace, treat the area as live. Do not walk into standing water to reach a breaker — call your utility or an electrician and wait.
- If the water is sewage, or came back up through a drain or toilet, do not clean it yourself and keep children and pets out. It is a biological hazard, not a mess.
- If anyone is hurt, or you smell gas, call 911 first. Nothing below matters more than that.
The first hour, in order
Stop the water at the source
Find the shut-off. On most Western Washington homes it is where the supply line enters — the garage, a utility room, the crawlspace, or beside the water heater — and there is a second one at the meter box by the street, which needs a curb key. If the leak is one fixture, its own stop valve may be under the sink or behind the toilet. Find yours now, before you need it; tag it so anyone in the house can find it in the dark.
Cut power to the affected area — only if you can reach the panel dry
Switch off the circuits feeding the wet rooms at the breaker, and unplug what you can reach safely. If getting to the panel means standing in water, stop and call an electrician or the utility instead. This is the one step it is right to skip.
Photograph everything before you move a single thing
Wide shots of each room first, then close-ups of the damage, then the source itself. Get the water line on the walls, the soaked flooring, and the contents where they are sitting. Video with narration is even better. Your insurer will ask what it looked like before cleanup, and cleanup destroys the evidence for the claim.
Get the standing water out — but leave the building materials alone
A wet/dry vacuum, towels and a mop are all useful and none of them will hurt your claim. What does hurt is demolition: do not pull up carpet or pad, do not cut drywall, do not remove baseboards or trim. Those decisions belong to the drying plan and to the adjuster, and they are hard to undo.
Lift what can still be saved
Off the floor and out of the room: electronics, paper, photographs, books, rugs. Put aluminum foil or blocks under furniture legs so the finish does not bleed into wet carpet. Wooden furniture on a wet floor stains the floor and the floor stains the furniture.
Move air, and be careful what you invite in
Open interior doors and closet doors so air reaches the cavities, and run fans across wet surfaces rather than at them. Opening windows helps only when the outside air is drier than the inside air, which in a Puget Sound winter is often not true. Do not run the HVAC if water reached the ducts, and never if the water was sewage — that spreads it through the house.
Call your insurance carrier and open the claim now
Do it in the first hour, not after the weekend. Write down the time you called, the claim number, the adjuster's name and their direct line. Ask two questions and write the answers down: what does my policy cover for emergency mitigation, and do I have to use a company from your list? In Washington the answer to the second is no — the choice of restoration contractor is yours.
Keep every receipt, and photograph everything you throw away
Fans, a shop vac, a hotel room, meals out because the kitchen is unusable — those are often reimbursable and they are only reimbursable if you can show them. Anything that goes in the dumpster gets photographed first. A bag on the curb is not a claim; a photograph is.
Write down the timeline while you still remember it
When you first saw water, what you did, who you called and when. A week later nobody remembers, and the timeline is what connects the damage to the event your policy covers.
What not to do, however tempting
- Do not wait to see if it dries on its own. It goes into the cavities, not away.
- Do not use a household vacuum on water. It is not rated for it and it will fail, possibly on you.
- Do not bleach mold you can see. It grays the surface and leaves the colony and the moisture that feeds it.
- Do not sign a contractor's paperwork you have not read while you are standing in water. Nothing has to be signed in the first hour.
- Do not throw out the damaged item before it has been photographed and listed.
Have these six answers ready when you call anyone
Us, another restoration company, or your carrier — these are the questions that decide what equipment gets loaded and how fast.
- What the water is: clean supply line, rain or ground water, or sewage.
- Where it started and whether it is still running.
- How many rooms and floors it has reached, and what the flooring is.
- How long it has been wet, as best you know.
- Whether the power is on in that part of the house.
- Your carrier and claim number, if you have opened the claim.
Want this where you can find it at 2am?
We will email you the whole checklist as a one-page printable — the sort of thing that belongs taped inside a cupboard door, next to the water shut-off you just went and found. Nothing on this page is hidden behind this; it is the same words, in a form you can keep.
This is general guidance for a common situation, not an inspection of your home and not advice about your policy. It cannot account for structural damage, electrical hazards, contaminated water or anything a person has to see to judge. If anyone is in danger, call 911. For advice on what your policy covers, call your carrier.