What should a homeowner do if their Plymouth home is ever damaged by floods?

6/6/2022 (Permalink)

If Floods Ever Impact Your Plymouth Home, You Should First Contact a Good Local Flood Damage Cleanup and Remediation Service for Help.

Every year, powerful seasonal storms batter Plymouth and the rest of the Northeast.  These monstrous weather systems often bring with them intense winds, torrential rains, flooding, and massive headaches for area homeowners.  As the storms pass through our community, your home could be compromised in a myriad of ways.  Tree limbs, or even entire trees, could fall on your house, damaging roofing and windows.  This, in turn, could make your residence much more vulnerable to stormwaters.  At the same time, flying debris could further impact your home in such ways and block its drainage systems.  Then, as heavy rains swell local rivers, lakes, and ponds, your house could be put in the direct path of raging floodwaters.     

What Makes Flood Waters Particularly Hazardous?

Flood damage remediation in Plymouth involves much more than simply removing the floodwaters and airing-out a residence.  As SERVPRO, a local Plymouth flood damage cleanup and restoration company, understands, it takes much more than this.  This is because floodwater, classified as “black water,” is the most contaminated type of water you can encounter.  It flows over various polluted surfaces, carrying with it such things as:

• Human corpses and animal carcasses
• Animal and human feces
• Industrial wastes
• Toxic chemicals
• Other harmful substances in soils 

This contaminated water is teaming with troublesome microorganisms that could, if not quickly and successfully eliminated, irreparably impact your residence and cause health effects.

How Does SERVPRO Quickly and Effectively Clean Up Flood Damage?

As your neighborhood SERVPRO, we are located nearby and our skilled technicians live in your community.  This is why we can often be onsite to help resolve your Plymouth flooding issue within four hours of your call, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year.  Once at your residence, SERVPRO experts:

• Inspect your home, noting all water damage and potential safety concerns like the presence of lead or asbestos
• Rapidly extract gallons of polluted standing floodwaters from your house with industrial strength extractors and submersible pumps
• Disinfect surfaces around your home with EPA-approved disinfectants and high-tech foggers
• Professionally dispose of hazardous wastes
• Set a drying goal based on local conditions and monitor its progress with moisture sensors/meters and thermohydrometers
• Quickly dry the interior of your residence with a network of cutting edge air movers, dehumidifiers, and Injectidry systems
• Further disinfect and deodorize your house with advanced antimicrobial-delivering foggers

Taken together, all of these measures help ensure that your flood damage is remediated as quickly and effectively as possible.  Many times, they can save you from future issues related to a flooding event, which can save you precious time and money.

How Do SERVPRO’s Foggers Disinfect Surfaces and Neutralize Odors?

The greatest concerns related to flood damage cleanup are eliminating harmful microbes and neutralizing unpleasant odors.  In order to tackle these key problems, SERVPRO employs the most advanced foggers in the industry today.  Our thermal foggers create dense fogs filled with disinfectants/deodorants that eliminate microbes or unwanted smells from confined areas of your residence.  Technicians use ultra-low volume (ULV) foggers that aerosolize microorganism/odor-eliminating agents to treat impacted materials and difficult-to-access parts of your home.  This is possible because ULV foggers, unlike other foggers, create fine mists that are able to easily penetrate tight areas and the small pores of affected materials.   

What Can Happen to My Home If I Don’t Have It Properly Cleaned by Knowledgeable Professionals?

As previously explained, floodwaters are particularly dangerous because they usually carry numerous harmful microorganisms.  The harm that these microscopic threats often cause is in addition to the troubles generally associated with regular water damage.  Some examples of the issues you can eventually expect to encounter after having ineffective remediation service performed are:

• Persistent foul odors that may become more pronounced during hotter and more humid periods
• Discolorations and stains from proliferating mold and mildew on floors, walls, and ceilings
• Deteriorating drywall and plaster
• Warping and buckling of floors, walls, and ceilings
• Structure-destroying dry rot that could require substantial and costly reconstruction efforts

It is for all of these reasons that you should take care of any flood damage as soon as possible and have the work done by trained professionals.  Otherwise, over the long term, your delays could cost you dearly.

As caring members of your community, we urge you to always prepare for storms and related flooding.  Also, you should know your cleaning and restoration options well before storms arrive.  With all that said, if you ever need help cleaning up in the aftermath of flooding, call SERVPRO of Plymouth/Wareham at (508) 746-9500 for assistance.