Three months after the Bastrop County Complex fires, damage estimates from the disaster are still rising.

Insured losses are now believed to be greater than $325 million, up from initial estimates of $250 million. That makes it “easily the worst wildfire in Texas history,” according to Mark Hanna, a public relations manager with the Insurance Council of Texas. Before the fires in Bastrop County, the worst year on record in terms of insured fire damage was 2009, when $115 million worth of damage was done in the state during the entire year.

Hanna estimates that about 90 percent of the homes destroyed in the fires were at least partially insured. Of those claims, he says more than half have already been paid out and closed.

Those that haven’t belong to people who either still haven’t decided whether to rebuild or move and so are still racking up additional living expenses or who are still in the process of sorting out their personal property claims.

From an insurance standpoint, those are the hardest claims to work through. The house is obvious:  it was there and now clearly isn’t and it has a value, but the property inside of it is more difficult.

“It’s time-consuming,” said Roland Rodriguez, an insurance adjustor with State Farm, “like itemizing inventory. To take time to sit down and remember everything is a process.”

To make it easier, insurance companies recommend documenting possessions before a disaster, preferably with photographic or, even better, video evidence. Despite the recommendations, very few of those affected by the Bastrop County Complex Fire had any such record kept off-site. Hanna said some residents saw the smoke coming, knew they were going to have to evacuate, and so they started taking pictures of valuables they knew they wouldn’t be able to get out.

“(Losing everything) is not a pleasant thing to think about,” said Matthew Caldwell, an adjuster with Hochheim Prairie Insurance, a Texas-based company with a fairly large presence in Bastrop County. The unpleasant and tedious task is often just not done, something Caldwell and Rodriguez hope will change in the wake of the fires.

Hochheim brought in close to 50 adjusters after the fire for the biggest push; State Farm had as many as 70, plus hundreds of representatives available through the telephone and online. Between the two companies, Hanna says, they represented about 40 percent of the insured homes that were lost.

With that many claims out there, Hanna says it’s no surprise plenty of public adjustors and insurance attorneys, builders and contractors have swarmed to Bastrop looking to earn some of it.

“They’re injecting $320 million into Bastrop County,” he said. “There are folks that want it.”

Rodriguez says it’s vital for those looking to rebuild or repair to do their due diligence when it comes to hiring contractors: check references, search for the company online or even get a second estimate. For repair work especially, Rodriguez says, if the estimates from the insurance company and the contractor come back with a wide disparity, then let the insurance company know so they can review the estimate or ask the contractor questions.

“Do your research,” he said. “No matter who it is.”