What Happens to a House After a House Fire?

12/8/2022 (Permalink)

How are the Contents Cared for After a Structural Fire?

Good question. When a fire happens, most people look at the apparent damage, which is the damage to the structure. The fire’s impact on the unique contents is an afterthought unless expected for the victims of the fire.

When flames or severe heat damage furniture, clothing, plastics, and other contents, the damage is often “total.” When contents are damaged beyond repair, the insurance company declares them a total loss. The restoration company will document these items on a total loss inventory list. Valuable items with extreme damage may be retained and stored for fire investigators or insurance company adjusters to inspect. Other items will be disposed of.

However, when the source of the damage to the contents is smoke and soot, the contents can often be restored. In many cases, soot, odor, and discoloration can be successfully removed when the items are cleaned and treated quickly.

The makeup of the smoke and soot impacts the difficulty of the cleaning and restorative process. For example, some soot will have a high-acid composition, others will leave oily deposits, and each is cleaned and removed in their way. The longer these substances remain on items, the more damage they can do.

There are times when our content cleaning specialists at SERVPRO of Yuma are not able to quickly determine if a particular content can be cleaned and restored. In this case, we perform a cleaning test on a small portion of the item. If the test results are successful, our technicians will complete the cleaning.

Sometimes, we will hire specialist contractors to work with us to restore valuable contents, especially on large fire cleanup projects where time is a critical component to the ultimate success of the recovery.

Services by Cleaning Specialists:

• Electronic equipment
• Clothing, leather, and fabric cleaners
• Area rug cleaners
• Fine art restoration
• Document recovery

SERVPRO of Yuma takes every fire damage job seriously. Successfully cleaning a family’s contents and personal treasures is meaningful and satisfying to us. We want to make every property damage event we restore “Like it never even happened.”

SERVPRO of Yuma: 928-247-1180