How Is Fire Damage in My Cocoa Home Likely to Affect my Daily Routines?

9/12/2021 (Permalink)

SERVPRO IICRC certified techs have the experience and training for any size fire damage restoration service needed for your home.

SERVPRO can Help You Deal with Hazards, Soiling, and Other Problems that Fires Cause

Daily activities such as heating, cooking, or operating electrical gadgets pose a risk of starting fires at your Cocoa home. Various safety measures, such as the installation of sprinkler systems and placement of fire extinguishers within the home, help add a layer of protection. Still, you cannot rule out the chance of a fire happening. Such incidents have several implications, including monetary costs involved in restoring or replacing items. Most people rarely think of how a fire incident changes daily routines, thus causing unnecessary inconveniences. Since each incident presents unique challenges, you cannot have a perfect action plan before the fire happens. However, the actions you take after the incident matter.

Is it Safe to be in a House After a Fire? 

After an incident leads to fire damage in your Cocoa home, you are likely to feel inclined to venture into the house to see what was damaged or at least to salvage any valuables that survived the blaze. Such a visit can have severe implications and can end up worsening the damages to your property. Unplanned forays into houses ravaged by fire are not ideal because you might:

• Expose yourself to harmful substances
• Cause additional damages such as spreading residues
• Risk injury from physical hazards

The reasons why fire damage sites pose such risks to you include:

• The presence of residues from combustion processes
• Weakened structural supports
• Damaged electrical cables

Professional restorers are aware of the risks and therefore take precautions to safely enter the damaged house. Our SERVPRO technicians have various PPE, Personal Protective Equipment, including heavy-duty gloves and rubber boots, which guarantee their safety when they enter the site the first time to evaluate the damages. The information we gather from scoping the area is what helps us deal with an incident "Like it never even happened." 

The immediate response includes simple as well as advanced steps. For example, we remove all foodstuffs from freezers and other storage units. We also check the depth of charring on structural supports and other physical hazards, such as frayed wires. Suppose the fire only affects a specific section of the property, such as the kitchen. In that case, we can use engineering controls such as setting up containment barriers with plastic sheets to isolate the area, allowing you to access the rest of the house safely.

What Safeguards Does a House Need After a Fire Incident?

The pain of losing valuables in a fire can distract you to the point of forgetting that you still have a duty to safeguard what the fire did not consume. In most incidents, parts of the structure and contents remain intact, thus necessitating protection before an action plan is formulated to address the damage. Our SERVPRO technicians help protect the structure by installing tarps or boarding up openings on the roof and walls, respectively. We can also help move contents within the structure or move them out to an external storage facility.  

Boarding up helps protect the house by keeping out small animals, people, rain, and other weather elements. It can also help retain the visual appeal of your home in case that matters to you. Our technicians use different board up techniques:

• Cover over
• Insertion
• Bolt with tension

The cover over technique places plywood boards over an opening by attaching them to surfaces around the opening. Although it is fast, it offers minimal security since the boards are easy to pull out with a pry bar or other flat tool. Insertion involves cutting the boards so that they fit into openings such as windows and doors that we need to seal, offering more security. For the bolt with tension technique, a plywood board overlaps the exterior wall, covering the opening. It is connected with bolts to two-by-four planks on the inner section of the wall. Apart from security, we also consider prevailing factors on site, including how long we expect the restoration process to take when choosing the board-up method.

Does It Take Time To Restore Fire Damage? 

Although you may want to regain access to your home without any delays, it is not always possible. Tasks such as cleanup and restoration of affected areas can take time. One reason why delays occur is that it is difficult to carry out different tasks simultaneously. For example, cleaning surfaces, drying, and refinishing them cannot happen concurrently. After scoping damaged sites, our SERVPRO technicians can give accurate estimates of how long the process is likely to take, allowing you to prepare accordingly.

SERVPRO of Central Brevard can help better navigate the woes of a fire-damaged property in Merritt Island, Cape Canaveral, or Cocoa Beach. Call us any time at (321) 638-4947. We're Faster To Any Size Disaster.