Cape Town’s Fire Safety Division confirmed that 13 homes were badly damaged or destroyed, and it’s estimated that almost 5000 hectares of land were razed during the blaze. Approximately two million litres of water, 2000 people and 26 aircraft were involved in fighting the fire. Sadly one brave pilot, Willem Marais, also lost his life in a helicopter crash while battling the fire in the Cape Town Nature Reserve. 
 
“It’s hard to imagine the shock and panic that comes along with watching the home you’ve worked so hard for, go up in smoke, and that’s before one even has to deal with the massive financial burden of trying to rebuild,” says Budget Insurance spokesperson, Martin Janse van Rensburg.
 
Janse van Rensburg continues: “It’s true that the things we dread losing most of all are the sentimental items - photo albums, family heirlooms, artwork and so on - things that we have a clear emotional attachment to, and it’s also true that no home contents or building insurance policy can replace these treasured things. But, what the right insurance policies can do in times like these, is to help alleviate the additional financial stress that comes with losing one’s home and assets.”
 
Janse van Rensburg expressed his sincere sympathy to those who were affected by the recent fires in Cape Town and recommended that homeowners and renters alike, “double-check your own insurance policy. Make sure you’re not underinsured and that high-value items like electronics or jewellery have been individually specified on your insurance schedule.”
 
Here are some other things to keep in mind when it comes to covering your home and its contents:
 
- Buildings insurance covers the physical structure of one’s home against physical risks like fire, and is a prerequisite to buying a house;
- Home contents insurance covers all of the movable items within a home (for example: furniture, clothing, TV sets). Even renters should get home contents insurance to cover these items;
- Underinsurance is a term that describes being insured for less than the actual value of the insured items. This results in a proportionately lower payout. Ask your insurance company for more information;
- It’s important to know the value of all of your belongings and the best way to do this is to create a home contents inventory;
- Before compiling an inventory you should first be sure what your home contents are. An easy way to determine this is to imagine taking the roof off your home and turning it upside down, everything that falls out of your house constitutes your home contents;
- You would then have to consider what it would cost to replace all these items at today’s values and that is how much you should insure your home contents for;
- Now it’s time to start drafting your inventory list.  Compile the list by going through the house, room by room, and noting down what is in that room;
- It is a good idea to also take photographs of the more expensive items such as jewellery, cameras and watches etc;
- Then add the items you need to insure that are stored elsewhere, such as in a safe-deposit box as well as the items you carry around with you like your laptop and cellphone;
- Collect and keep the receipts of your larger possessions like your TV, DVD player, fridge and microwave, not forgetting those that are small in size but big in price like cameras and jewellery;
- Make sure that you include valuable clothing such as leather jackets and expensive shoes on your inventory list;
- Then look out in newspaper advertisements etc to see what the prices for the equivalent items, in today’s terms, are;
- Valuable items like jewellery, art work and collectibles may have increased in value since you bought them. Check to make sure that you have adequate insurance for these items;
- Regardless of how you do it (written list, photos, computer hard drive, flash-drive, or in the cloud), keep a record of your inventory. If it is a physical document, store it safely. If it is a digital file, make sure to back it up and keep a copy on an external drive or online storage account; and
- It’s wise to update your household inventory every year or if you move home, in order to ensure that you keep track of new or discarded items.

For more information on Budget Insurance, visit www.budgetinsurance.co.za.