How Does SERVPRO Deal with Fire Damage in My Chicago Home?

7/25/2020 (Permalink)

Despite a pressing timeline, our SERVPRO team can help through mitigation, cleaning, and even reconstruction.

There are many phases of fire recovery, and with a complete team of restorers and contractors, we can help you through post-fire recovery in your Chicago property.

Many look to our SERVPRO team to provide fast and reliable restoration recovery for fire-damaged Chicago homes and businesses. With many years serving the city and its surrounding areas, we have seen hundreds of fire losses. We have helped many property owners to discover the most efficient pathways to restoring their structures to preloss condition. Understanding the restoration process can help you to appreciate the need for professional technicians like ours when disaster strikes.

Many aspects must get considered regarding fire damage cleanup, odors, and demolition for Chicago residences after a fire. Each emergency is different, so the methods intended to restore and recover your home vary as well. Some houses are near total losses, with much of the recovery happening with our contractors rebuilding significant portions. Other fires stay primarily in areas like the kitchen, offering challenges like protein residues that must get cleaned from surfaces and appropriately deodorized. While many of the specifics might change from one site to the next, the essential functions of fire restoration include:

    •    Emergency Services
    •    Demolition
    •    Mitigation
    •    Cleaning

What Emergency Services Happen Immediately After Fire Extinguishment?

There is a grouping of actions that can occur before mitigation that are explicitly designed to limit the total loss that your home experiences. Each of the steps within this heading serves a unique purpose towards improving the conditions within the house before more permanent restoration solutions take place. Much of these actions taken pre-mitigation involve the expertise of our qualified and licensed contractors. These professionals have experience in many of the building trades, allowing us to deal quickly with repairs and temporary construction solutions necessary to protect the property throughout the mitigation phase to come. Some of the emergency services expected after we arrive include:

    •    Fire Debris Removal
    •    Board Up
    •    Tarping
    •    Content Management

What Are the Benefits of Controlled Demolition for a Fire-Damaged Home?

One of the advantages of having a team of contractors available alongside our responding technicians is the work they can do to protect your home's structural integrity after a fire occurs. One of the most direct paths to help in this regard is controlled demolition. This approach removes overly damaged portions of construction materials from where they get installed to prevent potential collapses and to prepare the area for later needed reconstruction. Controlled demolition is beneficial to the property in many ways, beyond removing damaged portions of wall systems, flooring, and ceiling systems. Material removal also provides access to damaged areas beyond the surface and can reduce the severity of secondary effects like lingering odors.

What Does Mitigation Look Like?

Much like every type of loss incident that could impact your property, the mitigation steps necessary to restore your residence changes from one disaster to the next. With fires, multiple layers of effects must get addressed in a short period. The look and execution of mitigation are not universal. Depending on individual situations, mitigation could involve multiple strategies, methods, and techniques to reduce the loss you experience after these disasters. While the details of these general actions might change, you can expect mitigation after a fire to involve:

    •    Extraction
    •    Surface Cleaning
    •    Content Cleaning
    •    Controlled Demolition
    •    Air Quality Control

How Can I Get My Home Cleaned Again?

The cleaning phases of restoration often happen after both mitigation, and the necessary reconstruction takes place. While surface cleaning, like removing residues from exposed materials, might occur before restoration phases, much of the overall cleaning required to put the final touches on the property cannot happen until nearly all of the steps for recovery have taken place. This is also the case for efforts like deodorization. While many of the mitigation tasks can reduce the severity of smoke and burning odors throughout the property, the final neutralization and elimination of these lingering scents occur during this final cleaning phase. Removing odors involves several sophisticated tools and devices within our inventory, including thermal foggers, hydroxyl generators, and ozone machines.

Understanding fire restoration is not something that many homeowners have taken the time to do until they face substantial structural damage after a house fire. Despite a pressing timeline, our SERVPRO of Hyde Park / E. Bridgeport / Bronzeville team can help through mitigation, cleaning, and even reconstruction. We are available 24/7 at (312) 509-5000.