From the department leaving to the first repair, day by day

The week after a fire has an order to it, and getting the order wrong costs money and evidence. Nobody is thinking clearly on day one, which is why it helps to have read this on some ordinary evening beforehand. What follows is the sequence as it usually runs in Jonesboro, West Memphis, Marion and the smaller towns around them.

Day one: the building is not yours yet

Until the fire department releases the scene, the building belongs to the incident commander. That is not a formality. Crews stay after the visible flame is out because fire hides in voids, in insulation and in stored material, and it comes back. When the Altium Packaging warehouse on North 7th Street in West Memphis caught fire on a Saturday morning in September 2023, four acres of stored plastic kept producing hotspots that crews were still working three days later, with the roof already down. At the Nestle plant in Jonesboro in March 2022, crews pulled back out of a production building overnight because of structural collapse concerns.

So the first day is about people and information, not property. Get the names of the officers on scene and the incident number. Ask when the building will be released and whether the utilities have been shut off at the meter. Ask the department whether the structure is considered safe to enter, and take that answer seriously; the local building official is the one who decides occupancy, not you and not a contractor.

Call the insurer the same day, even if all you can give them is an address and a description. That call starts the claim, opens loss-of-use coverage if the policy carries it, and puts a claim number in your hand that every other conversation this week will need.

1. You callOne number per county. The dispatcher takes the address, the ZIP and a short description of what happened.
2. A local crew calls backAn independent restoration contractor already working that county rings you directly and sets a time.
3. They look, then scope itNothing is priced from a phone call. The crew walks the building, takes readings, and writes a scope you can hand to your adjuster.

Days one to two: closing the building

A fire leaves a building open. Windows are gone, doors are forced, and the department has usually cut ventilation holes in the roof for good reasons. Until those openings are covered, everything that happens to the building afterward is weather and trespass. Board-up and roof tarping is the first restoration work on almost every fire job and it is generally covered as emergency mitigation.

Weather does not wait in either county. Jonesboro sits in a humid subtropical climate with roughly fifty-two inches of precipitation a year. Crittenden County took twelve inches of rain on December 25, 1987, eleven days after a tornado had already opened a large part of West Memphis. A burned house that takes a week of rain through an open roof turns a fire loss into a fire and water loss, and the second half of that is avoidable.

Secure the site as well as the structure. Fire scenes attract attention, and a house with a tarp and boarded openings gets far less of it than one standing open. If the property has outbuildings, vehicles or a detached garage that came through it, note their condition now while the memory is fresh.

Days two to four: contents, and the inventory that pays

Most of the money in a residential fire claim moves through the contents inventory, and most of the disputes do as well. The inventory is a list of what was in the building, room by room, with descriptions, ages and what it would cost to replace. Nobody enjoys writing it and nobody remembers half of it from memory, which is why the photographs matter: pictures of open closets, of bookshelves, of the garage, of the inside of kitchen cabinets, taken before anything moves.

Contents cleaning normally happens away from the house. Items are inventoried, packed out, cleaned at a facility and stored until the structure is habitable again. That is not an upsell; a building that is open to weather, full of soot and under repair is a poor place to clean anything, and soft goods in particular need treatment that cannot happen in a damaged room.

Do not throw anything away yet, however ruined it looks. An adjuster generally needs to see or account for damaged items before they are disposed of, and something discarded on day two is something argued about on day forty. Photograph, list, and set aside.

Days three to seven: cause, records and the claim taking shape

Fire departments investigate cause. The West Memphis department runs a Fire Marshal's Division that handles that work, and Jonesboro's department has its own investigators; both routinely list a cause as under investigation for a period after the fire. The report they eventually produce matters to your insurer, so ask how to request a copy and roughly when it will be available.

Meanwhile, start the paper file: the claim number, the adjuster's name and direct line, the incident number, every receipt from the week including lodging and clothing, and a written note of every conversation with a date on it. Any authorization a restoration contractor asks you to sign belongs in that file too, and belongs read before signing. It is the document that says what they may bill and who they may bill it to.

Utilities need attention this week as well. Power and gas should not be restored to a fire-damaged structure until it has been inspected, and in Jonesboro the water, electric and sewer all run through the same municipal utility, which simplifies who to call. Anything involving reconnection goes through the utility and the local inspector, not through the restoration contractor.

What not to do in the first week

Two boundaries are worth stating plainly. Whether the structure can be entered or occupied is decided by the fire department and the local building official. Anything about a person's health after smoke exposure is a question for a doctor, and it is not one a restoration contractor or a website should be answering.

• Do not run the heating or air conditioning. One cycle pulls soot into ductwork and into rooms the fire never reached.
• Do not wipe soot off walls, painted surfaces or upholstery with a household cloth. Dry soot smears and sets, and a wiped wall is often harder to clean afterward than an untouched one.
• Do not eat food or take medication that was in the building during the fire, and do not use cosmetics that were exposed.
• Do not turn on electrical appliances that were in the fire area until somebody qualified has looked at them.
• Do not discard damaged property before it is documented.
• Do not sign anything you have not read, including any contract handed over on the sidewalk while the building is still smoking.

The second week, and what it looks like

By the end of week one, the building should be closed against weather, the contents should be inventoried and moving out, the claim should be open with an adjuster assigned, and there should be a written scope of work under discussion. Structural cleaning and odor work follow, then repairs, and repairs run on a different and longer calendar than the mitigation.

Displacement is its own problem in that window. When a fire at a motel on Nettleton Avenue in Jonesboro severely damaged one unit and its attic space in July 2026, nine residents were displaced overnight. Loss-of-use coverage, if the policy carries it, is what pays for that, and it is worth asking the adjuster on day one exactly what it covers and for how long.

What people ask before calling

Everything above is background. The call is what starts the work.