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It was a Sunday evening. I had been away for three days. And as I walked down the hallway to my apartment I smelled paint. As I got closer to my door I distinctly heard a hissing sound coming from inside my apartment. Fully aware that my apartment was heated by radiators I burst through the door only to find steam pouring out of my bedroom and an oppressive haze spreading through the rest of my apartment.

It was a lovely apartment, and one that had given me few problems over the years. This was a fact for which I counted my blessings after hearing the stories of my New York-born-and-bred friends. I didn't have a cockroach problem, and I'd never experienced a theft, but apparently, on this Sunday night in November, my luck had ended. My one bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side had become a sweltering jungle on the Upper Amazon. A hot, heavy cloud clung to my ceiling, the windows were fogged up to the point where water was dripping down the panes, art had fallen from the walls because the wallboard was too wet to hold nails, and paint was peeling all over the place. But even with the excess heat, I felt a chill run through me. My landlord was not responsible for the damage, and I did not have renter's insurance.

I immediately ran the few short steps into the bedroom and threw open a window, attempting to mitigate further destruction. But I could see that the damage had already been done. I stooped to feel my mattress ($650): soaked through to the box spring. I went to move the curtain ($50) away from the window: it fell with a squishy thud to the floor. I sprang to the closet to move as many clothes as I could before it was too late, but the cashmere sweater ($90) and wool suit ($200) were already stained with that nasty paint. The busted pipe steamed on, and I spent the next hour trying to move everything I could out of the bedroom.

Since it was a Sunday, the leasing office was closed. My building's superintendent, rather inconveniently, was visiting family out on Long Island and wouldn't return until Monday morning. As it turned out, I didn't get the pipe fixed for three days. In the meantime, the steam and water wreaked havoc on my pocketbook as well as my possessions. All told, that single faulty pipe cost me more than $2,000 in damage, and I could have avoided every dollar of that had I ensured my belongings before the accident.

As I drifted off to sleep that night, tossing and turning on the couch in the living room, I managed to find solace in the fact that the damage had not been worse. There had not been a fire or a robbery, and no one had been injured. But even if a larger disaster had struck, renter's insurance would have paid for those things, too. So when I awoke in the morning, damp from a night's steam bath, I called my insurance company before anything else.

Learn more about this author, Cassie Escriture.
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