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5 Things to Do After a Fire Damage in Your Perry Hall Nottingham Home (and 4 You Shouldn’t)
3/9/2016 (Permalink)
Your home has had a fire, maybe its significant damage to the kitchen, or maybe not. The fire is out now, and you’ve already scheduled services and talked to your insurance company. Your home has been secured (boarded up, if the doors or windows have been blown out), and declared structurally safe to enter. Your main goal is to protect yourself, avoid potential hazards and prevent penetration of soot into surfaces. This post will tell you what to do to prevent further damage a fire damage. The best thing you can do if you’re not sure is to talk to your adjuster and wait until help arrives, and nothing more. Let’s start from the bottom up (the floors)
DO Place clean towels on high traffic areas
Include areas not effected by fire. This will allow you to limit further damage to the areas, you should limit movement to prevent deepening of the soot, but at least cross contamination will be minimized until help arrives.
DO NOT attempt to clean carpet (or walls or ceiling or anything!) This will worsen the fire and smoke damage which could be irreversible. Irreversible damage = more expensive bill!
DO Change HVAC Filter
The air in your home is swarming with soot, smoke and dust after a fire and your HVAC filter is going to be overwhelmed, be sure to change these out regularly until clean-up has finished.
DO Protect airducts from contaminating other parts of the house. Cover vents with two layers of cheese cloth. Buy them here. Again, this will keep smoke, soot, dust and other loose air particles from causing cross contamination into other rooms.
Do NOT turn on any ceiling fixtures
The wiring may be bad, melted, fried or water saturated from putting out the fire, or the walls could be wet surrounding the appliance and It will shock you
DO NOT eat any food from affected area
This includes canned food (the food has cooked inside the can as the fire happened and has spoiled) Firefighter chemicals are poisonous and can’t be washed off, this coupled with extreme exposure to heat, and power outages has compromised the safety of the food and it cannot be consumed by humans or animals and MUST be disposed.
DO dispose all food from affected area:
The food is bad, but you may be able to include it in your claim if its in your homeowners insurance policy, take a picture of all the fire damaged food you’re tossing, save it for your adjuster or agent, and get rid of it. If you wait to to do this it will stink up your house, or WORSE you, your child or elderly relative might accidentally eat it! Trust us, toss it. While we’re on the topic, any products (cleaning chemicals, sprays, makeup, etc) are also likely compromised so make sure no one uses anything! And if you decide to toss these too, take a picture, save it for your adjuster or agent, and toss it out.
DO NOT attempt to clean appliances, the REAL damage is inside as well as outside. We can take care of that for now you can check out what we have next on the list.
DO Protect metal surfaces with a film of Vaseline or petroleum jelly. Since petroleum jelly is a skin protectant, it will also work on metal goods, and it will protect the item from soot damage the appearance of your metal goods.
Again we would really like to reiterate how important it is to be safe while remaining in your home after a fire damage. If any of these tasks seems too daunting, or even unnecessary, air to the side of caution and leave it alone, and keep children elderly and pets out of the area. Safety is the most important thing and it’s better to leave it alone if you feel uncomfortable.
Further reading
American Red Cross, Picking up the Pieces After A Fire, the American Red Cross website