What Fire Recovery Efforts Should I Leave to Professionals?

6/12/2020 (Permalink)

When you have a fire in your Morris Plains home, call SERVPRO. We know what your home needs.

Many of the restoration efforts for fire-damaged Morris Plains homes require precise equipment and trained technicians to complete. 

After a fire, your entire Morris Plains home might feel destroyed. Addressing each of these individual obstacles can be overwhelming and out of the capabilities of the average homeowner. Without sophisticated tools and experience in the realm of fire recovery, many of the restorative tasks necessary in your house can fall by the wayside in the early critical stages. 

There are several individual tasks that this could mean when you consider the need for fire restoration in your Morris Plains home. Our SERVPRO professionals have years of hands-on experience and training through the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC) to offer fast and confident responses to fire loss emergencies as they happen. As you might expect, little happens in your home without first assessing the damage and condition.

What is Necessary to Restore My House After a Fire? 

Speculation and wrong information leads to costlier restoration experiences and conditions that do not get adequately addressed. To provide the most accurate information and determine your property's needs after a fire loss, we can begin with job scoping. Our project manager and crew chief work along with the customer to determine what areas were impacted by the fire, pre-existing conditions, and what steps must get taken to ultimately make fire losses "Like it never even happened." Focal points of this job scoping include:

• Damage Assessment
• Content Evaluation
• Structural Inspections

What Should the Fire Restoration Process Entail? 

Fire restoration is not the same from one structure to the next, as blazes affect materials and contents differently. Understanding the recovery process can help you to know where your home is in the restoration process and what steps to take to return the house to preloss condition. While each of these approaches might not happen in each fire restoration task, these are the most common elements to residential and commercial fire loss recovery:

• Debris Removal – piles of ash and debris are common after a fire. Charred remnants of destroyed structural materials can also be a point of concern. Removing this debris can reduce concentrations of soot and the severity of present smoke and burning odors.

• Surface Cleaning – soot and residues are two of the common obstacles for structural elements and contents alike in your fire-damaged property. Wipe cleaning and media blasting are effective methods of removing these potential hazardous residues. 

• Air Quality Improvement – contaminants, ash, and particulates circulating in the environment can be a hazard to those exposed. Not only do our SERVPRO professionals wear respirators to keep us safe, but we also focus on cleaning up the environment in your home to reduce exposure risks with the occupants of the house.

• Controlled Demolition – After a structure fire, many of the materials used in the construction of your home can become irreparably damaged. Our in-house contractors can remove portions of these affected surfaces to provide a stable area to begin reconstruction without entirely rebuilding the entire region of the house.

• Water Removal – Fire extinguishing efforts can often leave our fire restoration technicians contending with standing water and saturation in specific areas of the property where the blaze was the most challenging to stop. Fire restoration can often include both extraction and drying needs for the house. 

• Deodorization – Smoke and burning odors can exist in the open environment and get trapped in sensitive materials throughout the damaged areas. We have multiple tools that can help to neutralize foul odor compounds. 

Is Content Management Always Necessary? 

To some extent, the management and restoration of exposed belongings and possessions in your home is a consistent need for fire restoration. While there are many instances where in-house restoration and recovery can be useful, pack-out processes can offer more intricate cleaning efforts for your belongings and safely store these possessions until they get returned after mitigation and restoration complete. In our SERVPRO warehouse, your items get:

• Focused Surface Cleaning
• Ozone Chamber Deodorization
• Ultrasonic Submersion Tank Cleaning
• Safe, Climate-Controlled Storage

Fire restoration can involve many advanced practices and techniques. Our SERVPRO of East Central Morris County team can help with a fast and reliable response to these emergencies that can help to secure insurance damage claims with a thorough inspection of the property. We can help through nearly all stages of recovery in your fire-damaged property, from mitigation and restoration through reconstruction. Give us a call anytime at (973) 887-9100.