Day 3: Phone Calls

Waking up an hour earlier than usual was not fun, but necessary since we were at a hotel on the other side of town away from the kids’ schools. I had emailed the schools the night before to make everyone aware the kids were returning –especially the counselors. R was worried. About her missed schoolwork. About her AP classes. About notes and a project that were burned up. About the dress code at her high school because all she had to wear was her girlfriend’s soccer practice clothes. Her list was ever growing.  F and S were excited and nervous to get back into the swing of things. F was playing football, so his concerns revolved around what he missed at practice over the last two days. S was excited to go back, but uneasy about everyone asking her about the fire. She kept saying she “didn’t know what to say.”
 
R drove herself to school. Husband and I dropped the other 2 off – I walked them in to make sure all was good. Lots of tears when I reached the elementary school. I knew that would happen as that is the school I taught in and spent most of my days over the last 7 yrs. As we left the parking lot I began the phone call list.

• Insurance adjuster for structure of home – make appointment for their visit to the house
• Insurance adjuster for personal belongings – make appointment for separate visit to the house
• Insurance adjuster for the 3 cars – I later found out that there were THREE different people that will be handling that (sigh – of course)
• Hotels with more accommodations –closer to schools (and more bathrooms).
• Call to stop services:
• Water
• Gas
• Electric
• Alarm system
• Pest control
• Landscaper

This was probably not my entire list.  10+ phone calls eats up quite a bit of the day – not to mention I had to pay attention closely on each call because there was account numbers and claim numbers and end of service numbers to write down and remember for future use.  Exhausting.  I can recall saying to myself, “Kim, you have to write a list of Things to do when your house burns down in case someone else needs this.”  I did search the Internet in those weeks following the fire and I did find a few resources. But, by no means was there a lot of support out there (info-wise) for people like us.