# What happens when your house catches fire?



## MagicTig (Jun 15, 2010)

Just a quick description of what happened to us on an Ionian island in Greece when we suffered a fire - make your own mind up about this - but I wish I'd known these things before we had to go through this experience to find out!

Basically from our experience we found out that even if you have an accidental fire in your home that is not caused by you, you can find yourself with the possibility of a charge of criminal negligence hanging over you. We also found out that our Greek insurance company made the whole experience twenty times worse and caused us to damage our health because they could/would not provide any help in finding people to clean and remove fire damaged/destroyed property from our apartment. Despite suffering from smoke inhalation we had to personally move and clean everything ourselves. They could/would not organise storage for our property either - so even when we found a clean apartment to move into we were surrounded by smoky property as we had nowhere else to store it 

The insurance company paid out in the end, but it would not help with interim costs at all. So if you don't have money up front to pay hotel fees, or removal costs etc you are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Suffering a fire and seeing all our stuff damaged or destroyed was bad enough, but the way we were not helped by the insurance company and the way we were treated by the fire service was far worse. 

We had lived in Greece for a number of years and naively thought we would stay there all our lives, but this experience made it very clear that we were not respected or valued as human beings at all. Once things started going wrong we found we had no support or safety net from the systems we would usually have relied upon in the UK and I presume in the US too.

So if you move to Greece - make sure you have extinguishers and fire blankets in the home and good high pressure hose-pipes and be aware that if things go wrong - you are on your own.


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## Texas Ted (Oct 18, 2010)

I am sorry to hear about the unfortunate events that took place, I hope you and your family have recovered and are much better now. 
Unfortunately it all depends on the insurance company you buy a policy from. 

It is very important your Insurance Agent views you as a client he/she should take care of , and not just a paycheck

I wish you the best of luck


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