Have you ever lost a home to fire?

Twice ,once as a real young child the second time as teenager both times wasn’t in the house at the time I do remember staying with friends while mom and dad worked it out.

I haven’t, but a woman I used to walk with in my neighborhood lost everything to a fire, and my cousin lost her home in the Paradise, CA fires.

Neither of them ever talked about the official documents you mention. Maybe my cousin had those with her when she evacuated?

Anyone with a driver’s license has ID on file with the state. They can easily order a replacement license online. If you have a passport you have that record also with our federal government, i don’t know how difficult it is to replace it.

I don’t think it’s very difficult to order a new birth certificate or social security card.

Bills, bank statements, and tax records, a lot of that is online now. Most likely you can look back at least a year electronically, although you wouldn’t have receipts you used for write-offs on taxes, although maybe some could be proven with credit card records. You would have to be audited for it to matter.

My husband has all of his paperwork in our house from the process of becoming a citizen, plus his birth certificate, which is from Mexico. I’m pretty sure he would be a mix of sad and freaked out if it was all lost. That seems more difficult to deal with to me than if I lost my official documents. I’m sure he could get another birth certificate and he’s a citizen of the US now so the paperwork isn’t needed so much, but I think for all people naturalized hold on tight to all records from the process.

The closest I’ve come was my nephew. His apartment complex burned down and he lost everything – including my childhood BB gun that he had borrowed.
I never brought up the subject.

I cannot imagine the loss. I had a large tree fall down and crush my metal pole barn with the usual barn contents inside. No one was hurt; no precious memories were lost; insurance covered costs; yet, I was devastated. It took me years to get things back to normal – and that is nothing compared to losing a home.
Unimaginable.

Grandparents lost their house in Alfred, Maine in 1947; cellar hole was only thing left, no chicken coop or tool shed.

We lost the family home to a fire in the night (electrical fan malfunctioned) and got out with some paperwork but not much. Not sure about the rest as the adults handled it but they didn’t seem overly stressed.

I haven’t. But when my mom was a little kid their barn burned and it took the house, too.
She remembers playing under a tree when suddenly a flock of birds flew out of the hayloft. She thinks that should have warned her but it didn’t, so she didn’t say anything to anyone…and then the barn burned.
She carried that guilt around her whole life.
She was probably 5.

Around 1998, I lived in a beautiful old Tudor-style building on the Hudson and the person who lived on the top floor (5th floor) decided to make Christmas ornaments by spray painting pinecones and putting them in the oven to dry. It caused an explosion and the entire top floor of this massive building burned in the fire, and the rest of the apartments below got soaked by the water. Everyone had to move out because the structure was unsafe to live in and obviously, all utilities were shut off. This was 10 days before Christmas.

The Red Cross was great and provided all of the residents with vouchers for food, clothing, necessities like prescriptions, and temporary housing. Those who finally found new apartments were provided with the first month’s rent and security. Some people chose to move back into the building a few years later, when it was all rehabilitated. I found a new apartment and decided to stay there.

As far as what I lost, I lost all of my furniture and many clothes. I didn’t have renters’ insurance, and it taught me a lesson about the importance of renters’ insurance. I remember one of my neighbors lived in a studio and she was given the total of her renters’ policy, which was 30k, and she put that down on a new house. From then on, I’ve had renters’ insurance for 30k, which is more than the standard renters’ policy.