What the first hour does decide is whether anyone gets cut and whether you end up with the photos your insurance company might want later. So before anybody reaches for a broom, take it in this order.
Keep everyone away from the glass
The pieces on the floor look like the hazard, but the glass still sitting in the frame is the part that moves. A broken pane sheds in stages, and something as small as a door slamming on the other side of the house can bring the next shard down. Close the room off if you can, send kids and pets elsewhere, and put on real shoes before you go anywhere near the window. Bare feet and slippers lose this contest every single time.
If the break is up high, in a transom or a second-story window, treat the ground below it as part of the hazard too. Glass travels a surprising distance on a hard floor, and it keeps falling for a while after the first crash.
The photos come before the broom
If there's any chance you'll file a claim, photograph the damage before you clean up a single piece of it. Take one wide shot that shows which window it is and where it sits in the house, then close-ups of the broken pane from inside and outside. If whatever did the damage is still lying there, the branch, the baseball, photograph that too, and if rain or wind got in, photograph what it touched.
Your phone stamps every picture with the date and time on its own, which is most of what an adjuster wants from documentation. The whole exercise takes two minutes, and there is no recreating it once the glass is in a box.
Clearing up without a trip to urgent care
Gloves on, then sweep. The big pieces go into a cardboard box or a doubled paper bag rather than a plastic trash bag, because broken glass works through plastic and finds whoever picks the bag up later. Once the visible pieces are gone, press a damp paper towel flat against the floor around the break; it lifts the slivers a broom slides right over. A vacuum is fine for the final pass, but only the final one, after everything you can see is already gone.
Leave anything still attached to the frame exactly where it is. Those pieces come out with the right tools when the glass shop arrives, and prying at them by hand is how a cleanup turns into stitches.
Cover the opening until the new glass arrives
For a pane that's cracked but still holding together, a few strips of clear packing tape over the crack will keep it stable for the days it takes to get new glass cut. For an open hole, heavy plastic sheeting or flattened cardboard taped to the frame will keep the weather out of a bedroom overnight without any drama. June in Portland forgives a covered window; January is less patient, so the colder the month, the sooner you want real glass on order.
Where the job is bigger than tape, a shattered patio door, a picture window, anything at a business, a proper plywood board-up is the right move, and the emergency glass repair page walks through how that works at any hour.
Who to call and what to tell them
A glass shop can tell you a lot from one phone call if you can answer three questions: which window broke, roughly how big it is, and whether it holds a single sheet of glass or a double-pane unit, the kind with two layers and a small gap between them. Plenty of older Portland houses still carry single panes, while most anything built or remodeled in recent decades is double. If you're not sure, say so. That's what the estimate visit settles, and ours are free and in writing.
One note on insurance before you dial your agent: get the written estimate first. Compare it against your deductible, because a fair number of single-window breaks make more sense paid out of pocket, and that's an easier decision to make with a real number in hand than with a guess.
If the window broke today
Call (503) 887-8329 and tell us which window and what happened. A cracked pane that's holding can wait for a scheduled visit; an open hole shouldn't sit through the night, and the emergency line answers nights and weekends. Clear Works Glass, SE Portland. Free estimates. Oregon CCB #261682, bonded and insured.