Report Your Damage

Outagamie County took over 20,000 outages and significant tornado damage through Grand Chute and southwest Appleton, including the Miller Electric facility.

Report your damage to Outagamie County Emergency Management even if it seems minor or is insured. The county needs the documented total to pursue state and federal assistance for residents.

Check the county website for the current damage-reporting form, or call 211.

This is the most important five minutes you can spend for your neighbors.

State and federal disaster assistance is unlocked by thresholds — a county has to document a certain dollar value of uninsured damage before individual assistance becomes available at all. That total is built from individual reports. Damage nobody reports does not exist as far as the threshold is concerned.

Report even if: your damage seems small, you have insurance, you are a renter, you have already started repairs, or you assume someone else reported your street. All of it counts.

Have ready: your address, whether the home is habitable, a rough description, an estimated dollar value if you can guess, and photographs.

Winnebago County Emergency Management is coordinating with Wisconsin Emergency Management on damage assessment. Reporting is normally through the county website or a phone line announced after the event — check the county site for the current intake method, or call 211 if you cannot find it.

Roof damage is the hardest part of a tornado claim to prove and the easiest for an adjuster to under-scope, because nobody can see it from the ground. Aerial photos and video close that gap.

Why it is worth doing:

• It shows damage a ground-level photo cannot — missing shingles, lifted decking, punctures, structural displacement, and debris impact across the whole roof plane
• It is dated evidence. If a dispute comes later, or a second storm passes through before your adjuster arrives, you have proof of condition on a specific date
• Nobody has to climb. Falls are the second-largest source of post-tornado injuries after cuts, and a storm-damaged roof is exactly the surface you should not be standing on
• It documents the whole property at once — roof, gutters, siding, outbuildings, fencing, and tree damage in a single pass

Do it before repairs or tarping, if it is safe to wait. Once a tarp is on, the original damage is invisible to an adjuster.

Share the files with your adjuster and keep your own copies backed up somewhere other than your phone.

A note on flying it yourself: temporary flight restrictions are common over disaster areas, and drone flights can interfere with rescue helicopters and utility aircraft. Check current restrictions before flying, and if in doubt use an operator who already tracks them.

Do this before cleanup, before tarping, before hauling anything to the curb.

1. Photograph and video widely. Every room, every exterior side, the roof from the ground, the yard. Wide shots to establish context, then close-ups of specific damage
2. Get the address in shot at least once — a house number or street sign proves which property it is
3. Photograph serial numbers and model plates on damaged appliances, furnaces, water heaters and electronics
4. Do not throw anything away until your adjuster has seen it or told you it is fine. If you must move debris for safety, photograph it in place first
5. Start a written inventory room by room. Old phone photos and social media posts are excellent evidence of what you owned and its condition
6. Keep every receipt — tarps, a hotel room, meals out because the kitchen is unusable, a rental car. Additional living expenses are covered under most policies
7. Log every call with your insurer: date, time, who you spoke to, what they said

Back it all up somewhere off your phone — email it to yourself or upload to cloud storage. Phones get lost and broken during cleanup.

Roof damage is the hardest part to document and the easiest for an adjuster to under-scope, because nobody can see it from the ground — and a storm-damaged roof is the last surface you should be standing on. Aerial photos and video solve both problems; see the two entries below.

A local drone service based in the Fox Valley, offering aerial photography and video of roof and property damage suitable for submitting with an insurance claim.

Call to ask about availability, turnaround and pricing — demand for this is high across the damage path right now, so book early if you need it.

Ask them for high-resolution stills as well as video, and for files you can download and keep rather than only a link, so the evidence stays with you.