Hour one is about the source: main shutoff or appliance valve, power off to wet rooms if water is near outlets, and phone photos of everything before it moves. Insurers and adjusters work from documentation, and the first hour is when the documentation is honest.
In this footprint, the first day is a basement day. Photograph the entry line or the burst before anything moves, shut off what is running, and get the source sentence said out loud, plumbing, ground, or surface, because the next three decisions, extraction, what comes out, what the claim is, all hang from it. In a finished basement, resist the urge to judge by the carpet: pull a baseboard corner's worth of evidence into the open with the assessor's meter instead, and let readings, not optimism, write the first scope.
Hours two to six are extraction territory. Standing water does not wait politely: it wicks up drywall roughly an inch an hour at first and runs under flooring along the subfloor. A shop vac handles a spill; a room of water needs truck-mounted or portable extraction and then real drying equipment, not a box fan.
By hour twenty-four the question changes from 'is it wet' to 'what is still wet.' Moisture meters, not fingertips, answer that. If a contractor cannot show you readings, the drying is a guess - and guesses are how mold shows up in month two.
Prefer to talk later? Leave your details and an independent local pro will call you back. No charge to you, no obligation.
Little Dry Creek Restoration is a free referral service. Submitting this form connects you with independent local contractors who provide the work.