Those of you who follow Zavee Thinking may have noticed that this week’s post is a few days late. I was a little tied up this week and when I explain why I hope you will understand that the delay couldn’t be helped.

I was planning to blog about the new Old Spice campaign, in which Wieden + Kennedy’s creative team first seeded Social Media influentials with the idea of tweeting Old Spice pitch-hunk Isaiah Mustafa to ask for a personalized video – and then produced the video “responses” almost in real time. You can read about this amazing campaign here.

But I’m not going to blog about Old Spice. I’m going to blog about my fire, and about how ADT (and others) saved my house.

At 10:06 on Monday morning, ADT, which provides central station monitoring services, detected a fire alarm on the second floor of my home in New Jersey. They called the local fire department, which responded within minutes. Soon, firefighters from no less than 10 different companies – mostly volunteers – were working to put out the fire, which began when wires shorted inside a wall between a bathroom and a closet. No one was home when the fire broke out and none of the firefighters or police was injured.

Because ADT called in the alarm so quickly, the fire damage was confined to a relatively small space. The fire chief told my wife, however, that if we hadn’t had central station monitoring the house would likely have burned to the ground. Since my neighbors were either at work or on vacation it isn’t likely that anyone would have called 911 before it was too late.

As soon as the firefighters finished, we called our insurance company, Chubb. They dispatched a demolition and restoration crew immediately and by that afternoon a dozen people were working to clean and dry out the house. The amount of smoke and water damage is surprising for such a small fire, but while heat goes up, water goes down and smoke and soot go everywhere – especially on a hot day when the air conditioning is blowing. In fact, much of the damage isn’t even close to the site of the fire.

I’m blogging about my fire first, because I want to thank the firefighters and police who burst into a smoke-filled house on a hot July day not knowing what they would find and who used sensitivity as well as skill in fighting the blaze. They could have torn my house apart while trying to save it. Instead they put tarps over the furniture so it wouldn’t be damaged by water and falling debris. Our local firefighters are volunteers and they are at the top of the list of local causes my family and I support.

Second, I want to emphasize the value of central station monitoring. We use ADT and we credit them with saving our house, but any good central station company will do. We were pretty cavalier about our service because we looked at it mainly as a burglar alarm and the house is rarely vacant. And house fires happen to other people. At least we had fresh batteries in the heat detectors. We had changed ours recently and if the fire had happened only a couple of months ago it could have been much worse.

Finally, I think everyone should take a hard look at their fire and casualty insurance policies and make sure that (a) they are adequately covered and (b) their insurance company is willing and able to handle the kind of losses that a house fire can cause. One thing we learned from our fire is that different insurance companies have different perspectives on losses like ours. The Chubb adjuster and everyone else on the team assures us that they have seen far worse than ours. Their overriding message is one that we needed to hear: Don’t worry. Knowing that we aren’t going to have to fight over every penny provides enormous relief at a time of great stress. If you don’t get the same feeling from your insurance company, you need a new one. And if it costs a little more to be confident that you won’t have a battle on your hands if you make a claim, it’s probably worth it.

The Zavee takeaway:

• Central station monitoring can save your house – and perhaps your life.
• Fire insurance isn’t a commodity – get the coverage and service you need and deserve.
• Firefighters are amazing – they deserve everyone’s respect and support. They certainly have mine.