Fire & Smoke Damage Restoration

(gentle music) – When we got out here, it was about 8:00 p.m. The fire was still actively going. We did not have any clearance to go into the space yet. So our crews sat here until about midnight. When they finally got the fire out, they knew the scene was safe, and we were able to go in. At that point, they just asked us to do the standard board up. They didn’t have power. They didn’t have lights. There was no way of protecting the property. (gentle music continues) (lock clicks) heavy board up in this whole area. This is the actual unit where the source was. Again, this is multi-family, so we had about 24 residents who were impacted and had to be pulled out of the building, but only one unit had severe damage, a lot of smoke damage and some char in some neighboring units. (gentle music continues) (metal door rattles) This was the source unit. Back bedroom had an electrical fire. So this is a about a 200 unit multi-family property. This loss came in in February, so it was frigid temperatures at the time too, so we had a lot of people that were sitting out here in blankets. We only had four units that were directly affected by the fire. The rest all had smoke odor. The key was getting these residents who were not directly affected by the fire with structure damage back in their units quickly. This is the neighboring unit, a lot of smoke. Exterior had some damage, but the inside, a lot of it was pretty salvageable. So we still had to gut the whole ceiling, the back bathrooms to get all the insulation outta here to make sure we didn’t still have a smoke odor. The flooring had to come out. A lot of the reason why the flooring came out wasn’t necessarily because of smoke, but because the fire department doused this thing with water to put the fire out. All this glass, everything that’s destroyed, this will all come out during the rebuild phase. But you know, the key during the mitigation side of it is to ensure that we deodorize it and protect the neighboring units from any secondary damages. We had a crew of about eight here. Almost everybody that was out here is a fire restoration technician. So they’ve gone through the IICRC Standardized Testing. They know how to mitigate, how to clean fire. They know how to board up. We have trainings with our carpenters who help show them how to board these properties up properly and make sure that they’re safe and secure. (door rustles) (latch and lock clinking) So once the scene was released, we had to move really fast to get out here and start deodorizing AND cleaning. This included HEPA and charcoal filters, some hydroxyl units, stuff like that, to start the process. Overall, the experience has been great for them. We did get some text messages and emails from our client telling us how impressed they were. This was actually one of our first jobs that we did with them on a larger scale, and it’s gone fantastic, and the reviews that we’ve gotten from them have been phenomenal. It felt good knowing that we were able to help out not only the property owners and the property management but the residents who are displaced as well. We take pride in that. When we show up here, we wanna make sure that we take care of everybody and not just our clients who call us on the job. (gentle music fades)