So sorry to hear of your experience, red_lover. I hope that you have been able to fully recover from the house fire and move on with your lives. I have Service Master out this morning. The price was reasonable for removal of some damaged wood and thorough cleaning of the area. Thankfully I live in a dry climate which seems to have helped. My insurance company will not cover the damage because it was not "sudden". (Even though the pipe break was accidental and I reported it immediately upon discovery, the leak was small enough that it had been going on for months.) Thank you for the feedback. Hopefully within a few weeks I can have this problem thoroughly resolved and report back with my experiences in the event others are in the same situation in the future.

Yes, but ANY sheet rock that got wet should be replaced---that includes that behind the baseboards. And new insulation.

Mother....so sorry for your loss. I would call in a HWF specialist asap. A lot of cleaning companies are either duct cleaning companies that do cleaning on the side or full on cleaners..but they are not HWF specialists. If your subfloors are wet, you may need to rip out the HWF to get the subfloor dry. Trust me, I had mold in this house when I bought it...best to be conservative in the repair as mold is a real PITA to get rid of. Also, I happened to watch a This Old House one night....there is now a clothes washer shutoff valve on a timer. Similar to a light timer, this valve bolts directly onto standard plumbing and if you open the valve, the valve automatically closes after 2 hours of not being touches. I want to install one, as this is my biggest fear of throwing in a load of laundry before leaving for work. Good luck, hope the cleanup goes okay!

They had to remove the tile under the vinyl under the plank in my basement (if I had known the floor guys were installing the plank on top of a vinyl tile which was on top of tile I would have had them stop and remove the two layers that were there before they put the plank in!), the lower 24" of drywall, all the doors in the basement, the 3rd bathroom vanity, and the carpet in the family room area and 3rd bedroom/office/craft space when there was a pipe blockage - one small pair of child sized socks somehow managed to get flushed down the toilet in the kids' bathroom - that ended up sending water from elsewhere in the house (master bath/toilet/sink and kitchen sink water) up through the laundry standpipe in the laundry room which backs up to one of the walls down in our furnace room in such a quantity that the floor drain out of the house to the main sewer line couldn't handle it all and it wasn't 'clean' or 'gray' water. When the water heater suddenly turned into a geyser-like fountain we were able to shut it off pretty quickly and it was clean water so after mopping and wet-vacuuming plus a few days with dehumidifiers along with those giant noisy fans saved us the pain of having the newly installed drywall redone! The basement water damage we were able to file a homeowners claim on, one thing people should note is that they have the duty to mitigate the damages as soon as they notice a problem - if that means calling the remediation company first and THEN your insurer, that's how you need to do it. If you call about possibly making a claim, even if you don't end up doing so, it goes on your file because the insurer will be looking for ways to minimize how much they have to pay out on future claims. If you ask about water damage claims, but ultimately don't go forward on that claim, but down the road you have water damage from a different issue that might be difficult to get your insurer to pay out on too - they look for reasons to deny claims, they make much of their money paying out out less than they take in with premiums and deductibles. Mold is a non-covered issue (usually) if it's due to lack of maintenance or failure to address the issue at the time and where it started. They don't cover sewer main backups that originate outside of your home and the loss must be sudden and unexpected. How do I know all this? Well...The basement. :P I've probably driven the poor workers a bit mad with all the moisture readings I've asked them to take just to be sure (I know it's dry but the irrational part of me wants to be totally certainly 100% truly sure of it!) Now we're just waiting on the flooring to come in and once that's installed the whole project will be finished. At least we don't have problems with the windows down there (yet!) and they're above grade. There's good drainage away from the house outside, all we need to do is avoid further socks being flushed down the toilet! We're still not quite certain how that happened but at this point it's sort of moot and the damage done.