Everyone in restoration wants the fire job. It's the biggest ticket, the most interesting scope, the job that makes the quarter. Nobody wants the fire job's checking-account math, because almost nobody looks at it until they're living it: a crew mobilized in days, a reconstruction budget in the six figures, and a payout that arrives on the carrier's schedule, not yours.
The number: fire claims run about six times a water claim
The Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I) publishes homeowners claim severity by cause of loss, built from ISO/Verisk data and reported through the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. The current table, covering 2019 through 2023, puts the average paid claim for fire and lightning at $88,170. Water damage and freezing averages $15,400. Wind and hail averages $14,747.
Fire and lightning claims are also rare next to the other perils: Triple-I's frequency data puts them at roughly one claim per 425 insured homes per year, versus about one per 60 for water damage and freezing. So a fire loss is the job you see least often and pay out the most on when it shows up. That's the opposite of the steady, high-frequency water and mitigation work most shops are built around day to day.
That $88,170 is an average across every kind of fire claim, from a kitchen fire to a total loss, and it's paid losses, not job revenue or contractor billing, so don't treat it as your ticket size. Treat it as what it actually tells you: the scale gap between a typical water call and a typical fire job is real, it's documented, and it's roughly six-fold.
The restoration translation: the biggest job is the biggest financing problem
A $15,000 water mitigation job and an $88,000 fire reconstruction don't just differ in size. They differ in how long your money is out.
On the water job, mitigation equipment comes off rental fast, the crew rotates to the next call within days, and the claim is usually simple enough that ACV payment and final billing aren't far apart. You finance the gap for a week or two.
On the fire job, you're financing a different animal. Contents pack-out, board-up, mitigation, then a reconstruction scope that has to be estimated, approved, and often supplemented as demo reveals more damage than the walkthrough showed. Materials, subcontractors, and a crew tied up for weeks or months all go out the door before the first significant draw comes in. The bigger the number in the Triple-I table, the bigger the mobilization-to-collection gap sitting on your balance sheet in the meantime.
That gap doesn't scale gently either. A fire job isn't "six times the cash need" of a water job in some neat proportional way. It's six times the dollar exposure riding on a claim that's also more likely to need engineering review, code-upgrade coverage questions, and a supplement process, all of which stretch the payout timeline further than a straightforward water claim ever does. Bigger dollars and a slower clock, at the same time, is exactly the combination that empties a checking account.
Four moves for the fire job specifically
- Size your credit line to your biggest job type, not your average job. If a single fire loss can run into six figures of outstanding cost before you see a comparable draw, your working capital needs to be sized for that job, not for a typical week of water calls.
- Forecast the fire job on its own line in the 13-week cash forecast. Don't blend it into average weekly cash-in. A single large fire loss can dominate your cash position for months; model it as the individual event it is.
- Front-load documentation on the reconstruction scope. The bigger the claim, the more a carrier or engineer will scrutinize it, and the more a supplement delay costs you in dollars, not just days. Photos, moisture readings, and a clear cause-of-loss narrative from day one shorten that review.
- Know your production-hour cost before you commit crews. A big job feels like a win the moment it's signed. Whether it actually is depends on whether the approved scope and pricing clear your real burdened cost. It's the same discipline that matters on every job, just with more zeros riding on getting it right.
Fire work is good business. The math above isn't an argument against taking it. It's an argument for financing it like the distinct animal it is, instead of assuming your water-job cash rhythm will stretch to cover it.
Matching your credit line, your forecast, and your documentation process to what a fire job actually demands is core CFO work. If you want a second set of eyes on how your own fire jobs have run, let's talk.
General education for restoration and reconstruction owners, not financial, accounting or legal advice for your specific business. Talk to your own advisors before changing how you price, staff, or finance a job.
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Sources: Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I), "Facts + Statistics: Homeowners and renters insurance," fetched and read in full September 25, 2026 at iii.org. Claim severity figures (fire and lightning $88,170; water damage and freezing $15,400; wind and hail $14,747) are from the "Average Homeowners Losses, 2019-2023" table, sourced to ISO® (a Verisk Analytics® business) and published via a May 2025 National Association of Insurance Commissioners study; the table covers homeowners multiple-peril policies (HO-2, HO-3, HO-5, and HE-7 for North Carolina) and excludes Alaska, Texas, and Puerto Rico. Claim frequency figures (approximately 1 in 425 homes for fire and lightning; 1 in 60 for water damage and freezing) are drawn from the same Triple-I page's frequency data, covering 2018-2020. These are paid-claim figures, not restoration contractor revenue or billing data; no restoration-specific mobilization cost, collection rate, or margin figure is asserted in this article. The cash-timing discussion and the four moves are practice and opinion.