When tragedy strikes, there’s a house fire and thankfully nobody’s been hurt, it’s time to figure out how to restore the property, if that’s possible. Fire damage in Gainesville often falls under the jurisdiction of the intrepid Terry Schmidt, owner of Triton Emergency Restoration & Cleaning Services, Inc. His fearless teams are ready to go in and clean up a property after a fire, but there are a number of precautions the fire damage crews must take as they work. Ignoring security issues could mean injury, or worse.
The first task is making sure the structure itself is sound enough that it won’t fall while the Gainesville fire damage restoration is taking place. The last thing Schmidt wants is for a wall to fall on his crew. When a fire strikes, it can undermine structural integrity in stairs, floors, walls, ceilings, and joists. The crew has to tread very carefully, or a floor could topple underfoot. The idea is to know which floors are stable and which are not before anybody starts moving around. The first step to stabilization is to reinforce foundations, exterior walls, and roofs. In order to do this right, Schmidt and his crews must be adept with the structural aspect of buildings. His company is like a construction company that offers a cleaning service for fire damage in Gainesville, Schmidt explains. Just as a construction company needs to know how to make a building stand, Schmidt’s company must know how to keep a damaged building standing.
Respiratory health is of great concern at the site of Gainesville fire damage too, says Schmidt. His crews wear the appropriate respiratory face masks so that they don’t inhale the microscopic toxins floating in the air. Inhaling such debris can damage the lungs. “It’d be like smoking cigarettes all day on the site,” says Schmidt.
If this sounds like a lot of dangerous work, that’s because it is. But are Schmidt’s crews performing these tough tasks every day? “We respond to maybe 3 or 4 fire damage calls a week,” says Schmidt. He explains that, typically during the summertime, people are careless with grills getting too close to their homes during a barbecue. That’s the biggest cause of home fires during the summer. Then, in the beginning of October, the risk rises for furnace-related fire damage in Gainesville. People are staying indoors because the weather’s cooler, and they’re relying increasingly on their heating. However, if people don’t maintain their fireplaces and furnaces properly, they can spark terrible fires, Schmidt warns. For homes that aren’t well insulated, people use space heaters. But if people don’t monitor the space heaters, they could spark electrical fires.
Then there are the kitchen fires. “People cooking bacon on a Sunday morning leads to many kitchen fires,” says Schmidt. “If people walk away from the stove, sidetracked by one thing or another, a grease fire can catch on the stove and soon enough the whole kitchen goes up in flames.”
These stories show how, when it’s time, Schmidt’s teams are ready to clean up sweeping fire damage. And yet, if homeowners could be just a little more responsible, so many more fires could be avoided.