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Fire & Water - Cleanup & Restoration

Is There a Straightforward Way to Sort Through Materials During Fire Restoration at Slidell Homes?

9/13/2020 (Permalink)

charred debris and mess in a living room, round table SERVPRO Restores Fire Damaged in Homes in Slidell, "Like it never even happened."

SERVPRO Can Help You Plan the Restoration Process Correctly, Simplifying Sorting, and Other Major Steps

Although fires are highly destructive, they do not consume all the materials and contents in the affected building in all incidents. Therefore, the recovery process involves the restoration of various items that are still useful. Restoration presents many challenges. Even the simplest aspects, such as sorting through debris to find useful materials, might not be as easy as you would expect. SERVPRO helps in many ways when Slidell homeowners need restoration services.

Which fire damage situations present the best restoration chances? 

Fire restoration at your Slidell property is likely to be easier if the main issue is the accumulation of smoke residues on surfaces. In such a case, cleaning and other straightforward procedures can deliver the results you expect. The effects smoke has on various surfaces can be categorized differently and includes: 

  • Settled smoke residues 
  • Chemical changes such as yellowing or staining 
  • Deterioration of the surface such as corrosion by soot 

Our SERVPRO technicians can help you restore the damage caused by exposure to smoke residues making it, “Like it never even happened.” 

Removing settled residues is possible, although the approach required to get the right outcome might differ. Our technicians use both dry and wet cleaning methods depending on the condition of the affected materials or the residues. Typical dry-cleaning methods include vacuuming and wiping with cleaning sponges, while wet cleaning can range from spraying cleaning solutions on a surface to immersing an entire item in the cleaning solution.

Which other damage categories leave room for restoration? 

  • Charring and other slight deterioration from heat action 
  • Heavy odor 
  • Deterioration from moisture accumulation 

Apart from fixing issues caused by smoke, it is also possible to restore other types of damages such as charring, bad smell as well as the effects of moisture that materials absorb during the firefighting process. Restoring such damages requires more elaborate procedures compared to cleaning. For instance, to fix scorched wooden furniture, there is a need to strip off the charred layer before refinishing. The method chosen for stripping off the affected layer needs to be strong enough to remove all traces of charring but mild enough not to damage the item irreversibly. 

Our SERVPRO technicians use various abrasive methods, including sanding. We can also use specialized techniques such as dry ice or soda blasting since they are highly effective, yet they do not damage the underlying materials.

Now that I know what to restore, where do I start? 

After moving items, the mess left at your property, tearing down construction materials, and soiling various things during the firefighting process can make it challenging to decide where to begin the restoration. Various approaches can help ease the challenge, including: 

  • Separating salvageable and questionable items 
  • Content moveout to an external storage facility 
  • Creating exclusion zones  
  • Safe handling of the damaged materials 

While some forms of damage to items are readily restorable, others might take several steps. You might also discover that the damage is too extensive to restore after you have already started the process. For instance, wet smoke residues are known to cause irreversible soiling. Instead of treating everything the same, you can separate into groups of the readily salvageable items and those that need further evaluation.

In the aftermath of a fire incident, your usually neat home is likely to be in disarray. One disadvantage of this is the lack of space to carry out various restoration processes. One way to address this problem is to do a moveout. Our SERVPRO technicians can help prepare your valuables for the moveout by grouping and packing them in boxes.

Executing restorative procedures can spread soils and other wastes from one section of the property to another, thus affecting items or building materials untouched by the initial fire. Sometimes, the spreading is subtle, and you only realize there is a problem when damage is done. Our technicians take various precautions to ensure safe handling of contents to avoid spreading soils. We can also create barriers to separate the affected areas from the rest of the property. We usually use plastic sheets to construct such barriers, thus keeping demolition dust, soot, and other fine particles from spreading widely. When demolition construction materials, we use trash cans or heavy-duty plastic bags to hold the wastes, thus keeping the loss site organized.

Renovating your Pearl River, Abita Springs, or Lacombe home after a fire can be more challenging if the loss site remains in disarray. Call SERVPRO of Slidell to help keep everything organized. You can reach us at (985) 649-1516. We’re Faster To Any Size Disaster.

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