Dealing with Fire Insurance in Italy
Some harsh lessons learned after a fire in the house
When we signed papers for our mortgage at the bank, house insurance was part of the huge pile of paperwork. I remember laughing about it with Paolo, our banker. Our house has masonry construction, like almost all houses in Italy, and there’s very low odds of it burning down.
We didn’t look at the policy for five years. Then we came home to a fire in an upstairs bedroom. The house and roof were fine structurally, but every surface, drawer, and crevice was black with filth. Huge cobwebs from the soot and smoke particles were draped from every corner.
That’s when we realized we had no idea what our policy actually covered or what we were supposed to do. We even had to Google how to call the fire department.
We assumed we had content insurance, but the policy only said, “If you paid for it, this is what we cover.” We didn’t know what the insurance company needed, or the extent they were supposed to help us.
Our insurance company is located over five hours away and there isn’t a local office. Everything had to be done over the phone and email.
It became apparent very quickly that these people were not going to be our friends. The first clue was when our initial report to…
