Why Would I Want the Stress of Packing-Out the Contents of My Dallas House After a Fire?

6/3/2020 (Permalink)

Our SERVPRO technicians will assist you through every step of your homes fire damage recovery.

A Planned Move-Out of Furnishings, Household Goods, and Personal Possessions Enhances Their Chance of Restoration While Hastening On-Site Mitigation and Remediation of Fire Damage in Dallas

Not many household disasters overwhelm a homeowner as profoundly as a fire. The magnitude of the damage and the aftermath can be enormous. Damages include aspects the average resident never considered, including significant firefighting water destruction that experienced professionals must manage immediately. A double hit of contaminated water saturation and gritty, sticky soot damage exposes the contents of your Dallas home to the potential of severe adverse consequences, including ruin unless restorers employ creative and proven solutions.

What Options Are Available to Restore and Safeguard the Contents of My Home?

When a devastating event like fire damage happens in Dallas, sometimes a constructive way to organize the chaos is to move your furnishings, household goods, and personal possessions off-site. This well-reasoned strategy of dividing and conquering can reduce your stress if you trust the pack-out process and understand how the now-separate locations of your home's damaged structure and compromised contents contribute to a successful outcome of the overarching crisis.

Why Do We Recommend Partial or Full Pack-Outs After Fire Damage?

What is the Benefit of a Pack-Out at Your Home?

Water removal and fire residue cleanup are challenging enough without SERVPRO technicians required to shift furnishings and personal property continuously. As our Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC)-trained Water Damage Restoration Technicians (WRT) and Fire and Smoke Restoration Technicians (FSRT) move from damaged space to space inside your house, the water removal and fire cleanup are much more streamlined if floors are clear of large items. Moisture and fire residue levels inside your home immediately decrease with a pack out.

What Are the Benefits for Packed Out Items?

Homeowners sometimes toss out items our team could save due to the lack of space to spread out damaged articles for review, and the pressure on the on-site mitigation and remediation tasks. The frantic pace slows a bit after the pack-out, encouraging our production facility technicians to sort through the fire-damaged items carefully. We work alongside you with your insurance company, our detailed Contents Claim Inventory Service (CCIS), providing precise documentation of your property's condition at every step of the restoration process. If an item cannot be restored, we back this up to help you obtain the appropriate claim amount from your carrier.

Who Takes Responsibility for the Pack-Up and Pack-Back?

Our crew follows meticulously designed protocols to pack-up and create an inventory for your possessions. We use a mix of traditional lists, digital photographs, and barcoding to account for the location and condition of all articles we remove from your home. Each item is processed appropriately and then tracked and stored in climate-controlled spaces at our warehouse until we arrange to return it to your cleaned, dried, disinfected, and deodorized home.

What Specialized Cleaning and Drying Solutions Are On the Menu for My Possessions?

When we evaluate items at our production facility, we select from a  wide range of cleaning and drying strategies to return your personal property to previous functionality and appearance. 

For example, we consider the following targeted cleaning methods for packed-out objects:

• Textiles and other soft possessions benefit from laundering in our industrial washing machines or sub-contracting to dry cleaners familiar with the challenges of removing soot and other fire and water damage residues from clothes, linens, and window treatments.
• Loose, non-permeable articles clean more efficiently when soaked in immersion tanks filled with a solution of water and proprietary cleaning solutions or solvents, in the case of oil-based soiling.
• Ultrasonic machines use sound waves to dislodge ground-in and deeply entrenched soiling of intricately detailed solid items. 
• Upholstery cleaning by trained technicians shows better results in our contained space where airborne debris is not present to resoil the fabric.

Unique drying strategies help with both firefighting water saturation and post-cleaning dampness:

• Freeze-drying of papers and photos stabilizes wet documents, books, and images. First, the object has its temperature lowered below freezing. Then, skilled technicians use the process of sublimation to transform the frozen water into a vapor without the intervening liquid step.
• Small drying chambers permit our technicians to manipulate the balance of air movement and temperature needed to evaporate moisture before dehumidifiers capture the vapor for disposal.
• Commercial tumble dryers return rugs, clothes, rugs, and other textiles to preloss condition.

Let SERVPRO of Southeast Dallas County demonstrate how we can help your house and home recover from the many aspects of fire damage. Day or night, we receive your call to (972) 227-0800.