Fire & Smoke Damage

The most dangerous damage from a small fire happens in ways you’ll probably never even know about.

Why is it, that after a fire, that awful stench of smoke hangs around even after you’ve cleaned everything and replaced the furniture? If you’ve ever been a building that had a small fire, you’ve experienced this for yourself. Maybe the owners pretend not to notice it, or they’ve grown accustomed to it. Still, there’s something about the place that sticks to your clothes, follows you back to your car, and above all makes you want to go somewhere else.

Even worse is when you can see where the fire happened. Oh, it’s kind of fun to watch the traces of dust and dirt on the walls all right, and try and guess which cabinets have been replaced, or see which spots the owner just couldn’t reach. Kind of fun, like watching an apocalyptic zombie movie — you’re glad you don’t have to live there.

The problem with fires is that they don’t limit themselves to the places you can see, or the objects you can easily clean. Smoke behaves in a devilishly unique way. After stinking up the room and leaving black soot on every available surface and discoloring the paint, it keeps going. Smoke rises through tiny cracks and crevices — some just a few millimeters wide, or even less — and infiltrates the most intimate, inaccessible spaces of the building.

Did you know ordinary water pipes let smoke travel from room to room? No, the smoke doesn’t travel inside the pipe. The pipe has to penetrate the wall somehow, and for that the plumber made a hole in the wall for the pipe to go through. That hole, in turn, is a little larger than the pipe, and there are holes everywhere the pipe needs to go. To a wisp of heated smoke furiously trying to push its way through the structure, those holes are like wide-open doorways inviting the smoke ever onward and upward!

It’s not the smoke’s fault. The smoke is just following the laws of physics. Hot stuff rises, and smoke is hot. But everywhere that smoke goes, it leaves residue. Where it pools in a cavity behind your kitchen cabinets, the smoke leaves a pungent black mess like an unwanted present… ready to start emitting toxic gases and nasty smells for years after the heat is gone.

Unfortunately, as the property owner, this means a potentially serious problem on your hands. Smoke that’s penetrated into parts of the structure you don’t know about can cause long-lasting odors and even structural damage. To take care of the problem, you need knowledgeable fire restoration professionals that know smoke’s wily ways… and how to undo the damage that’s been done.

Fire damage restoration professionals that can distinguish all the different kinds of fire and smoke damage, like:

– Wet Smoke Residue, which is the product of cooler, smouldering fires. This kind of residue is smeary, sticky, and produces pungent odors and difficult-to-clean smoke webs.

– Dry Smoke Residue, which comes from hot, fast-burning fires. Dry smoke residue is powdery, dry, and nonsmeary.

– Protein Residue, which is almost invisible but leaves an awful, powerful odor. Protein residue loves to discolor paint and varnishes.

– Fuel Oil Soot, the product of furnace “puff backs.”

– Crime scene and fire fighting residues, like fire extinguisher residue, fingerprint powder, and tear gas… these aren’t produced by the fire directly, but still need cleaning.

When you call Property Damage LA, our trained professionals will assess the type and extent of fire and smoke damage to your property. Using that assessment, they’ll determine what’s needed to make your house or building good as new.

Property Damage LA will go through and determine:

– How thoroughly was your property really damaged by the fire? How many different kinds of materials were affected? What’s the best way to clean them? Will it be necessary to move out personal effects during the restoration?

– Which areas were unaffected, and how can they be quickly protected from spreading odor and further damage?

– What can be restored, and what will have to be replaced? Who’s doing the inventory?

– What methods will restore your property most effectively?

One of the most important parts of fire damage restoration is a rapid response. The longer smoke residue and soot hang around your property, the lower the chance it will be possible to clean them! Therefore, don’t delay. Call Property Damage LA now.