Disaster Restoration Cleanup: Ashes from the Thomas Fires Causes Trouble for the Homeowners!

Wildfires can cause trouble even when they do not directly affect the homes. Ashes and smoke from the Thomas Fire ended up covering the entire perimeter of Mr. Levine’s home, leaving him clueless on what to do next. Mr. Levine called his insurance Broker, Hoffman Brown and they recommended Allied Restoration to help with the cleanup.

Some homeowners would wonder why there has to be a professional restoration company just to clean up the walls and wipe the interiors. They would question what a restoration company does for smoke remediation and try to clean their home themselves to save money. The cleanup process for getting rid of soot, ash, and odor is actually more complicated than just using a towel to wipe and Febreze to cover the odor.

How the smoke cleaning process works:

The cleanup for smoke and ash may sound like an easy task, but for the average household, it would take a serious amount of work hours without the help of a restoration company. The cleaning usually consists of both an exterior pressure wash and interior detailed cleaning. The problem that most homeowners can not deal with is the smoke odor. Once smoke particulates enter a home, they are there to stay. Opening the windows and trying to air it out will only bring in more smoke particulates. Masking the odor can only do so much, but once that perfume or Febreze wears out, the odor will still be there.

How Allied Restoration would perform the interior smoke and ash cleanup is one of two methods:

• A detailed cleaning of the interior with the assistance of HEPA air scrubbers. We clean every horizontal surface of your home with a detailed wipe down and HEPA Vacuum. We also set up HEPA air scrubbers and industrial fans that create a vortex of air flow that takes the smoke particulates inside the home and runs them through a powerful filter. This creates a clean indoor air quality again for your home.‍
• A detailed cleaning of the interior and a smoke deodorization formula. We clean every surface of your home with a detailed wipe down as well, but we follow up with a smoke deodorization formula that we deploy inside your home. We will set up a containment and deploy a formula that will create a fog that deodorizes the smell completely. The home can not be occupied during this method and the homeowners will need a temporary place to stay while the smoke deodorization takes place.

How Allied Restoration would perform the exterior smoke and ash cleanup.

• A detailed cleaning using pressure washers on the roof and walls of the exterior. Our crews will power wash the exterior from top to bottom and scrub down any soot or ash that may be clogging the drains and gutters. There will be streams of black soot that will flow down from your roofs to the walls as we power wash. A regular hose will not get deep enough into the walls for all the soot to run off.

Allied Restoration also performs smoke deodorization as well as cleanups. Check out our smoke deodorization service page for more information.