How Do I Perform Fire Debris Cleanup in My Home?

4/21/2020 (Permalink)

When it comes to fire damage cleanup and restoration in Fort Walton Beach, SERVPRO Is Serious!

You Can Hire SERVPRO Franchise Professionals to Assist You to Remove the Debris in Fort Walton Beach

After a fire, it is not advisable to tackle fire damage restoration in your Fort Walton Beach residence without the assistance of experts. However, you can take a few steps to start cleaning up your home. Make sure you prioritize safety.

What can I do after a fire?

Below is a list of several expert fire damage restoration tips to help you recover from your Fort Walton Beach home’s fire damaging event.

• Reduce movement in the house to prevent additional damage, the spread of smoke, and soot particles from getting embedded in fabrics.
• Place towels over high traffic areas like carpets and rugs
• Wash your hands to avoid transferring soot to the walls, upholstery, and wood
• If you have shut off the electricity, wait before emptying the refrigerator and freezer

What Should I not do after a fire?

The actions you should avoid doing after a fire damages your house include:

• Avoid attempting to wash painted surfaces walls, upholstery, and carpet without the assistance of professionals
• Avoid cleaning appliances or electrical equipment that the fire damages
• Avoid consuming packaged or canned food that is stored close to the scene of the fire
• Avoid turning on ceiling fixtures if the ceiling is damp because of the water firefighters used to extinguish the flames

What should I do about the debris?

As the property owner, it is your responsibility to clear debris from your home after a fire. Thankfully, most home insurance policies provide coverage for debris removal. It is an essential expense to restore your property to its preloss state. SERVPRO can help you remove the debris quickly because we have advanced tools to make this procedure easier. We can even remove hazardous materials safely.

What is regarded as household hazardous waste?

This is the waste from houses, which poses a threat to human and animal health or the environment. Examples include toxic, ignitable, reactive, or corrosive chemicals, such as pool chemicals, bleach, paint, antifreeze, and used oil filters; removing bio-hazardous waste quickly helps protect public safety and health. It is an emergency protective measure. Since the waste could significantly affect the environment, we do not combine it with the debris from the general clean up that is disposed of in a landfill.

Do you include burned appliances and electronics in the hazardous waste clean-up?

No, we do not include electronic wastes or appliances like computer monitors, televisions, cell phones, and CPUs in hazardous waste clean-up. Instead, we remove them as part of the overall debris removal procedure.

What next after debris removal?

The removal of debris paves the way for thorough cleaning of the property. It is essential to clean the structures of your house, such as flooring and painted walls. The longer you let soot sit on affected surfaces, the more extensive the destruction becomes, and the cost of restoration continues to increase.

How can smoke damage impact my property?

In the majority of fire losses, removing smoke and soot is the toughest part. Besides, even a small fire can cause severe soot damage within minutes and leave unpleasant odors if you do not clean up your property. It is appropriate to handle soot damage within one or two days of a fire to prevent permanent damage.  Our SERVPRO team has the tools and expertise to clean up affected surfaces quickly to mitigate the loss. Fire damages usually present unique cleaning and restoration situations. We consider certain factors in determining how difficult it is to remove smoke residues. They include:

• The type of surface – In porous surfaces, particles, and odors penetrate further, and cleaning them is more challenging. It is easier to clean non-porous surfaces
• Age of surface – In general, older surfaces are more challenging to clean, regardless of the materials
• Amount of moisture – Moisture sets smoke residues, making them harder to clean and more likely to stain the affected surfaces
• Amount of heat – If the flames of the fire were hot, cleaning the surfaces is harder. Surfaces expand and become more porous because of the heat. Therefore, odors and residues penetrate the surfaces more deeply. Heat may also cause materials to melt or char. In such a case, our SERVPRO team can often refinish the affected materials

There is water from firefighting efforts, what can you do about it?

Water can cause additional destruction, such as mold growth. Our SERVPRO crew can extract the water from the affected areas as part of the fire restoration job. We have different types of pumps, air movers, and dehumidifiers that we can use to remove the water and moisture. The time it takes to restore a property varies based on the extent of the destruction.

Cleaning up your house after a fire is a challenging task that calls for SERVPRO of Fort Walton Beach the help of professionals. Call at (850) 863-2552 to help you restore your home to its original state. "Like it never even happened."