Summer Is Lightning Fire Season! Do You Have A Plan To Protect Your Family?
As spring and summer roll on, thunderstorms are rolling through much of the country. It’s getting to be lightning fire season, and today we have two examples to share with you.
Residents of both communities were glad they had Raleigh Renters Insurance and Toledo Renters Insurance. In both cases, a lightning fire at an apartment complex displaced residents, costing them money for hotels and causing significant loss of personal property among residents. These losses are entirely avoidable with the proper coverage.
That coverage is part of all Effective Coverage renters insurance in North Carolina, Ohio, and across the country. Click through to hear the horrifying experiences of residents and to learn how to protect your family from lightning fires in apartments and many other risks.
First, a quick overview of how renters insurance protects you from an apartment complex lightning fire. You’ll generally utilize the loss of use coverage first, because that will pay for your immediate costs caused by a fire loss, such as a hotel and meals you might normally have cooked at home but can’t until the fire department clears the building for you to return. Those expenses can be significant, and often come at the worst possible time.
Wallets get left behind in a middle of the night lightning fire depressingly often, so even if you’re financially able to absorb the cost of the hotel and other expenses, you might not have access to cash or credit cards. Renters insurance takes care of those costs for you under loss of use coverage, and many companies have agreements with hotels that enable the hotel to simply invoice the insurer, or for the insurer to provide a voucher, to account for situations like that.
Once you’ve gotten a decent night’s sleep in a hotel after the lightning fire displaces you from your apartment complex, you’ll start thinking about replacing personal property that was lost in the fire. Effective Coverage sells both North Carolina Renters Insurance and Ohio Renters Insurance with replacement cost coverage. This simply means that you get the cost to replace the item, not the actual cash value. The ACV of your five year old couch might be fifty dollars – that’s not an amount that would buy you a new one. You need replacement cost coverage on your policy to avoid that situation.
In Raleigh, lightning caused a fire that both injured residents and caused large personal property losses. The same storm claimed one man’s life nearby in Cary, NC. The lightning fire was ignited at around midnight, one of the worst possible times – most people are in bed or nearly so by then, and those sleeping are often doing so heavily.
The fire department was able to get into the building at first, but ended up having to fight it from outside. The building is essentially a total loss from this lightning fire, which means that residents may not even be able to get inside to get any personal property that’s not damaged, due to safety concerns. Remember that Raleigh Renters Insurance generally covers property lost in a fire, whether it’s burned, smoke damaged, water damaged, or simply inaccessible because the building is a total loss. That’s considered part of the fire loss.
In Toledo, a lightning fire caused heavy damage at Southwyck Landing Apartments, possibly due to lightning striking a transformer. The fire was reported around 5 in the morning, which is better than the midnight fire in Raleigh because at least some people are up and about at that hour, especially passers-by on their way to work. Fast reporting may have mitigated the damage somewhat, and certainly reduced risk to individuals, but the building may or may not be able to be saved.
Ultimately, lightning fires in apartment complexes are a regrettable fact of life. Advances have been made in preventing them, but they’re impossible to do away with completely. Given that the risk can’t be avoided, you should transfer the risk with renters insurance to help you and your family recover faster and without serious financial damage if disaster does strike. Effective Coverage is able to offer replacement cost policies in both Raleigh and Toledo, as well as across the country. Protect yourself today – call (800)892-4308 or click to get covered - whether you need renters insurance quotes online or coverage anywhere else!
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