Hour one is about the source: main shutoff or appliance valve, power off to wet rooms if water is near outlets, and phone photos of everything before it moves. Insurers and adjusters work from documentation, and the first hour is when the documentation is honest.
In Richardson, name the floor in the first hour. If the house is slab, and most Richardson houses are, photograph the baseboards and the floor edges in every room touching the wet one, because slab water travels under walls and announces rooms away from its source. If the water is sewage at a low fixture, keep the household off that bathroom and photograph the fixture as found: in this housing stock that photograph starts a cast-iron conversation, not just a cleanup.
Hours two to six are extraction territory. Standing water does not wait politely: it wicks up drywall roughly an inch an hour at first and runs under flooring along the subfloor. A shop vac handles a spill; a room of water needs truck-mounted or portable extraction and then real drying equipment, not a box fan.
By hour twenty-four the question changes from 'is it wet' to 'what is still wet.' Moisture meters, not fingertips, answer that. If a contractor cannot show you readings, the drying is a guess - and guesses are how mold shows up in month two.
Prefer to talk later? Leave your details and an independent local pro will call you back. No charge to you, no obligation.
Cottonwood Creek Restoration is a free referral service. Submitting this form connects you with independent local contractors who provide the work.