House Fire/Smoke Damaged 27"imac

I had a kitchen/house fire recently(no one was injured). Fire mainly in kitchen, but smoke damage throughout the house. I managed to get my 27"imac out of the house, but could not save mouse or keyboard. I rather forcefully pulled the imac loose from the cord and got it outside, but smoke did envelop it for a short period of time. No apparent fire damage to case or screen.
At the suggestion of my insurance company, I took it to Best Buy to have them get pictures and music from harddrive. They were unable to get it to boot, they kept getting "no bootable device or media found" or something to that effect. Best Buy told me that they could attempt advanced data recovery at a cost of $499. Insurance will pay for it, but I hate to pay them that amount of money.
Does anyone have any ideas? Should I get a universal mouse and keyboard and try to recover the data myself or do I pay Best Buy the money and take my chances on their tech savvy?
If I did purchase mouse and keyboard for imac, would a universal mouse and keyboard work and what are some things I could try after hooking up the imac?
Thanks for reading.

Hi, First, glad no one got hurt, I would imagine by just pulling out the power cord & assuming your Mac was running & you where actually using it, You may well have damaged the HD..
Whether via insurance or your own pocket, I would contact an Apple Approved Service Agent (reading from other Posts BestBuy have never had good repair results) Have your Mac inspected & I suspect you will need to replace the HD.. maybe invest in a HD external case (OWC) and see once you Mac is up & running you can retrieve some of your info from the old HD..Professional Recovery is expensive with no guarantees.. SJ will be over the moon that you chose to save your 27"Mac instead of the cat""
Re:- K/B & Mouse, once the AASA has repaired the Mac treat yourself to new Apple units.....L
Message was edited by: elmac

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