Emergency guide
You came home to a flooded house, do this, in this order
Coming home to standing water is different from watching a pipe burst: the water has had hours or days to spread, soak, and degrade, and you don't yet know whether it's safe to walk in. The first minutes are about safety and evidence, not cleanup. Work this list in order.
Do this in the next 10 minutes
- 1
Stop at the door and assess before entering
Standing water can be energized by submerged outlets, power strips, or appliances. Look and listen from the doorway: sagging ceilings, the smell of sewage or gas, popping or buzzing sounds. If you smell gas, don't touch light switches, leave and call the utility from outside.
- 2
Cut power, without standing in water to do it
If the panel is reachable over a dry path, shut off the main breaker. If reaching the panel means stepping through water, do not, call an electrician or your utility to disconnect from outside. No amount of soaked flooring is worth an electrocution risk.
- 3
Shut off the water main
If water is still flowing or you can't find the source, close the main shutoff, typically in the garage, at an exterior wall, or in a box near the street. If the flow is from the water heater, close its cold-supply valve too.
- 4
Document everything before you touch anything
Walk the house with your phone on video, then photograph each room: water lines on walls, standing water depth, damaged contents, and the source if you can see it. Also note evidence of timing, mail dates, when you left, anything that establishes how long the house was unattended. You get exactly one chance at the untouched scene.
- 5
Call your insurer and get mitigation moving the same day
Report the loss promptly, prompt notice is a policy condition, and get a restoration crew extracting and drying now. Ask your insurer if they need anything before unsalvageable materials are removed, but don't let the house sit wet waiting for an adjuster: your policy requires you to prevent further damage, and every hour matters at this stage.
- 6
Move what's salvageable, write off what's not, but keep it
Get furniture, rugs, and belongings out of the water and drying. Don't discard anything yet, even ruined items, the adjuster needs to see or have photos of everything you'll claim. Stage discards in the garage or yard rather than the dumpster.
Why the unknown hours change the job
Time is the multiplier on a water loss. Clean Category 1 water that sits begins degrading toward Category 2 within about 48 hours as it contacts flooring, soil, and building materials, and mold can start on wet drywall and carpet in 24–48 hours. Water also keeps traveling the whole time you're gone: what began at a supply line in the laundry room ends up under the flooring three rooms away, wicked a foot up the drywall, and soaked into every cabinet toe-kick in its path.
Practically, that means a loss discovered after a weekend away usually involves more demolition than the same failure caught in an hour, more flooring out, more drywall cut, antimicrobial treatment where contamination has started. It's not the crew upselling; it's what the extra wet-time did. It also means the DIY option is mostly off the table: by the time you're finding the water rather than watching it happen, surface drying can't reach where the moisture has gone.
Finding what failed
The usual suspects for a house that flooded while nobody was home: washing machine and other appliance supply hoses (they're pressurized around the clock), toilet supply lines and fill valves, water heaters, ice maker lines, and, in Arizona, slab leaks that finally surfaced. If the source isn't obvious once the water is down, don't guess: a plumber or leak-detection service can isolate it, and "cause of loss" is a question your insurer will want answered precisely anyway.
Insurance when the house sat wet
A sudden supply-line or appliance failure is typically a covered loss even if you weren't home when it happened, sudden refers to the failure, not to how fast you found it. Expect the adjuster to ask how long the home was unattended; answer honestly and document the timeline, since extended-absence questions are routine on these claims. What hurts a claim isn't having been away, it's slow response after discovery, discarded evidence, or a cause that points to long-term seepage rather than a sudden failure. Report promptly, mitigate immediately, and keep every photo, invoice, and damaged item.
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