The Hazardous Effects After A Fire In Your East Taunton Home

5/23/2020 (Permalink)

Our SERVPRO of Taunton/Mansfield team can help with efficient cleaning and restoration methods available anytime that you need them.

What Lingering Effects Are Hazards After a Fire in East Taunton?

Our SERVPRO team can help to identify hazards in your East Taunton home after a fire and work around the clock to restore these damages.

Fires are not one-dimensional threats to your East Taunton home that require only one specific restoration technique to resolve. In many situations, there are multiple lingering effects after a fire gets extinguished, which can be health hazards or structural concerns for your home. Addressing these conditions requires experienced professionals like our restoration technicians working with an insurance company and the customer to get the house back to preloss condition.

Fire damage in East Taunton often requires an array of qualified professionals from our roster, including Water Restoration Technicians (WRT), Fire & Smoke Restoration Technicians (FSRT), and Odor Control Technicians (OCT.) Assessing lingering threats like water damage from extinguishment or soot and smoke residues can happen in the initial walkthrough and job scoping conducted by our project manager and crew chief.

Where Is Smoke Damage the Worst?

Smoke damage is one of the lingering effects that can often continue to damage a residence after a fire gets extinguished. The smoke produced during the combustion and burning of materials throughout the house can spread quickly throughout the entire structure. With open HVAC systems, smoke residues and odors can spread into almost every room of the house connected to the initial damage point. There are a few places where smoke damage is likely to be the worst, including:

    •    Near the Ignition Point - It is not challenging to assume that smoke and burning are going to be the worst where the fire starts. Before the disaster spreads in the house, it can burn the longest in this starting point. With a total burning of the ignition point, smoke effects can be the heaviest in this area.
    •    Ceilings – In the same manner that convection ovens circulate warm air, smoke rises. You can recognize the presence of smoke and ash by a blackening of ceiling tiles and drywall.
    •    Upper Portions of Wall Surfaces – Much like the ceiling surfaces, oily residues, and smoke effects can also get found on the upper halves of wall surfaces towards the ceiling.

How Challenging Are Odors to Remove?

As is the case with many loss incidents like flooding and biohazard cleaning, odors can often be one of the most challenging and persistent threats to the structure. ‘Airing out’ the problem zone does not resolve the problem. Instead, deodorization is a process that relies heavily on sophisticated tools and equipment available to our SERVPRO professionals. Depending on what materials and what area of the house has become affected by foul smoke and burning odors, we can choose among multiple odor removal devices, including:

    •    Thermal Foggers – by heating a deodorizing compound to a vaporous gas, we can quickly and thoroughly spread out this neutralizing product throughout the affected area. In a gaseous state, the process is likely to also help trapped odors in materials get neutralized.
    •    Hydroxyl Generators – these devices work in two different ways to help the home after a fire loss. Through UV cleaning the environment and producing radicals, these machines can eliminate odor molecules on contact. The onboard HEPA filter can also reduce the present particulates and soot in the environment.
    •    Ozone Machines – These units are not safe to use with living things around but are among the most definitive and authoritative weapons in the battle on lingering odors. By breaking apart oxygen compounds, single molecules get produced, which can bond with odor groupings and break them apart.

Can I Clean Soot on My Own?

Soot can be one of the most unsettling symptoms of a recent fire, especially when you understand the immense challenge it can be to remove. There are several strategies that our SERVPRO team implements depending on its location and severity. These include:

    •    Water-Based Solvents – Oily residues often require water-based solvents to remove, but they can also be effective at times against the acidic soot particles.
    •    Media Blasting – By utilizing pressurized air and soft media like sodium bicarbonate, we can often remove much of the soot adhered to the surfaces of affected materials.
    •    Controlled Demolition – While it is always the focus of our professionals to restore before replacing, controlled demolition is one of the most surefire ways to remove soot from the household.

Many homeowners believe that the worst is over with fire once it has gotten extinguished, but there is still much damage that can happen. Our SERVPRO of Taunton/Mansfield team can help with efficient cleaning and restoration methods available anytime that you need them. Give us a call anytime at (508) 824-0200.