Beyond the Flames: Secondary Damage and Hazards in Fire Damage Restoration
When your home suffers fire damage, it’s normal to think that the fire is the worst of it. After all, if not controlled, a fire can destroy your home and possessions and cause significant injury. While this can be, and often, sadly, is the case, it’s essential to remember that fire damage leads to its own set of issues.
As such, when you hire a professional for fire damage restoration, you must ensure you’re hiring someone with knowledge of water and mold damage who specializes in treating compromised air quality. Fortunately, these are all things an experienced fire damage restoration professional from BluSky can handle. This blog will explore these top fire-related issues.
Mold Growth
With this entry, you might be thinking, “Mold growth? After a fire?” Though mold is a type of fungi that has long been associated with water damage, such as floods and leaks, it is also common after fire damage. This fact surprises most homeowners, as many people falsely believe that mold can’t grow in a charred environment.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Rather, a charred environment that still has standing water after the fire department puts out the flames, coupled with intense humidity, creates the perfect breeding ground for mold. Remember, mold needs three things to survive: moisture, humidity, and a food source. Charred environments have plenty to offer in terms of moisture and humidity, and since mold can survive on most surfaces, including burnt wood, it can grow in as little as 24 hours after the flames have been extinguished.
Fortunately, there are some proactive steps your fire damage restoration contractor can take to try and minimize the risk of mold growth after a fire.
Swift Water Removal
Swift water removal is a top priority to reduce the risk of mold growth. Of course, this will not be something you can handle yourself, as it’s likely that the house will be unsafe for you to enter in the limited window you have to take action against mold.
Thankfully, this is where a water damage restoration professional comes in. They can wear the proper gear and navigate the property safely to remove standing water as soon as possible. While the water removal method may vary from home to home, most water restoration techs use a combination of large-scale wet-dry vacuums and pumps.
However, swiftly removing standing water is not enough; your tech also has to tend to anything wet. Remember, mold survives on most surfaces, so wet carpet, damaged furniture, and drywall may have to be removed if they weren’t already damaged in the fire and taken out.
Dehumidification
In addition to removing standing water and anything that’s waterlogged, your water damage restoration team (as part of the fire damage restoration process) will use a dehumidifier, air movers, and fans to get rid of excess moisture that has built up in the air.
After water is used to put out the flames, moisture is left in the air. This moisture often leads to a damp, musky odor and a damp environment. As mentioned above, this creates a hospitable environment for mold spores to grow and travel. Fortunately, dehumidifiers remove these moisture droplets, removing one of the sources mold needs to survive.
Structural Damage
Though mold is a serious health hazard and household issue that’s common after a fire, more than likely, the bigger issue you’ll be facing includes structural damage.
Structural damage can refer to any damage that affects the home’s integrity. After a fire, structural damage means ceilings, floorboards, and walls have collapsed. This is because many of the materials used in the construction of floors, walls, beams, and ceilings, such as wood and insulation, are easily burned, especially if not treated with a fire-proof barrier first.
Simply put, if the building materials meant to support walls and ceilings are burned, they will no longer be effective and will require repair or replacement. This brings us to our first fire damage restoration step: making prompt repairs.
Prompt Repairs
Fires leave a path of destruction, so you should expect many items in your house to need repair or, in many cases, replaced. For example, you’ll likely need all your floorboards removed and replaced with new flooring that isn’t burnt, covered in soot, or water-damaged. Likewise, you may need your windows and doors fixed, as these are commonly used as entry points for firefighters. Even if your windows aren’t used as entry points, they might crack and break due to the extreme heat.
These are just a few examples of the kind of prompt repairs your fire damage restoration team might need to make. In all cases, they will assess the damage to ensure everything that needs fixing receives it. This brings us to the next point: reinforcement.
Reinforcement
Prompt structural repairs technically include reinforcement, but it deserves its own category.
Once the debris has been cleared and your fire damage restoration team is ready to make repairs, they will start with reinforcement. These reinforcements could include a wide range of activities but commonly involve:
- Structural reinforcement: Strengthening beams, columns, and load-bearing walls with steel braces and supports
- Foundation reinforcement: Strengthening, lifting, and stabilizing slabs
- Roof reinforcement: Adding trusses, new roofing materials, and support beams
- Floor reinforcement: Installing additional joists, beams, and steel plates to reinforce concrete overlays
Reinforcement is an essential step of the fire damage restoration process, as it ensures your home is sturdy and structurally sound, preventing the need for more costly repairs down the road.
Electrical Hazards
Next, your fire damage restoration team must address any electrical hazards. Because of the extreme heat, electrical wires within your home will likely be melted or otherwise damaged.
Melted electrical wires can lead to shock or be the catalyst for another fire, which is the last thing you need right now after encountering one already. About 50,000 house fires in the United States are caused by faulty electrical wires. Now’s the time to get these repaired and replaced!
Turn Off Power, Gas, and Water Lines
As just mentioned, a household fire could melt electrical wires, so it’s best to have a technician come out immediately who can turn off the power to your home and gas and water lines.
Though it might stand to reason that fire wouldn’t affect your home’s water system, the extreme heat can melt plastic pipes. Once melted, harmful contaminants, such as ash, can wind up in your drinking water, leading to health issues. Even smoke can enter your home’s water system, leading to exposure to benzene. Turning off everything minimizes your risk of another fire and allows your team to take stock of what’s truly going on.
Professional Inspection
Just like after a flood, you can only know it’s safe to re-enter your home once it has been properly inspected. This step is one of the first things your fire damage restoration technician will do.
During this inspection, they will check out your home’s water, gas, and electrical lines and determine the severity of the damage. They will also check for structural issues and determine the severity of the smoke damage. This professional inspection is the first step to repairing structural damage, thoroughly cleaning and sanitizing soot-covered areas of your home, and starting the restoration process so you can move back in.
Replacement of Damaged Components
Your fire damage restoration team will work on replacing any damaged components within your home. While your contractor will likely prefer to make repairs and structural reinforcements, electrical boxes, drywall, and flooring will typically need to be replaced entirely.
While your contractor may not be able to replace your furniture and belongings, they will try to salvage all that they can through meticulous cleaning, deodorizing, and restoration.
Compromised Indoor Air Quality
Last but not least, thorough fire damage restoration will always include an analysis of compromised indoor air quality.
Smoke lingers after a fire. Smoke, soot, and other fire-related products can deposit harmful chemicals and volatile organic compounds into your home, furniture, and other surfaces. Not only can these compounds discolor your walls, turning them yellow, but they can also make you really sick.
Benzene, for example, is one of the compounds that gets released after a fire. In the short term, benzene exposure can cause headaches and fatigue. However, in the long-term, it’s been highly associated with the development of cancer. In some cases, extreme exposure to it, at a very high level, can be fatal. This health risk is why you should only re-enter your fire-damaged home with a proper inspection and completed fire damage restoration. You could unintentionally expose yourself, your loved ones, and even your pets to severe issues.
To check for compromised indoor air quality, your fire damage restoration team will collect air samples that are then sent to a lab for thorough testing. This testing is an imperative step, as it can educate contractors on exactly what kind of pollutants they’re dealing with so they can treat them correctly.
Ventilation
Ventilation during a fire is crucial, as firefighters want to clear out as much smoke as possible to treat the flames effectively. To do this, they use a ventilation fan.
After the fire has been put out, your restoration pro will also use a ventilation fan, but this time for a much different purpose. Ventilation fans are used to transfer fresh outside air inside the house, which will very much still smell like smoke. These fans aim to circulate fresh air and replace the poor, smoke-infused air.
Air Purifiers
In the same vein, your contractor will likely also use air purifiers. These air purifiers clean the dirty air and then recycle it.
Basically, the air purifiers cleanse the air while the larger ventilation fans bring in fresh air from outside. Since they perform two different functions, both are integral to proper fire damage restoration.
Contact BluSky For Quality and Efficient Fire Damage Restoration Services
Homeowners face many hazards, but fires are one of the most devastating. In an instant, you can lose everything. This is why, when facing what seems like an impossible task, hiring a fire damage restoration technician who knows what they’re doing and can do so with compassion is critical to giving you some much-needed relief and peace of mind.
At BluSky, our professional contractors specialize in fire damage restoration services. We understand what’s at stake and work tirelessly to ensure your home is restored and structurally sound. Contact us today at 800-266-5677 to speak with a team member. The sooner fire damage is tended to, the better off you’ll be.
