How Long Do I Have to Clear Out Flood Damage?

6/8/2020 (Permalink)

Heavy summer showers bring flooding to our area. SERVPRO has the equipment and experience to restore your home.

Flooding can Destroy Patchogue Homes and Businesses if not Addressed Fast by Qualified Professionals Like our SERVPRO Team 

As you might expect with any loss incident, there is a finite timeline to restore the damages to your Patchogue home before considerable tear-out and reconstruction are necessary. Addressing these pressing concerns is even more vital with conditions like flooding, as standing water can lead to exposure to contaminants like bacteria, viral pathogens, and other harmful microbes.  

The pace in which flood damage in Patchogue homes gets out of control varies between loss incidents. However, any of these disasters carry the potential for widespread structural compromise and health hazards. Addressing these concerns is the priority of our responding SERVPRO technicians, as we have multiple emergency services and mitigation solutions that we can employ beginning the moment we arrive. Knowing what you need to do after these emergencies can ensure that steps get taken to resolve loss conditions as soon as possible.  

What Should I Do First After Flooding?  

The immediate steps that you should take following the onset of flooding in your home do not vary considerably. In most situations, the priority is protecting what matters most – namely, your family. Walls can get rebuilt, and contents can get restored or replaced, for the most part, so the priority should always be the safety and wellbeing of those exposed during a flood event. Here are some of the steps that you can take if you are unclear. 

• Contact SERVPRO – Reaching out to our professionals should always be one of the first things that you do after an emergency, which gets our experienced technicians mobilizing towards the mitigation and recovery of your home at any time.  

• Call Your Insurance Provider – You might be ahead to reach out to your insurance provider to see what (if any) insurance coverage exists in your plan for the restoration and recovery of flood damages in Patchogue. While many property owners have limited coverage in this regard, there are often portions of the restoration process that might get covered by your policy.  

• Protect What You Can – It is not always feasible to relocate some of your home's possessions and belongings during a flood. However, slow-moving damages can leave small windows to move your possessions to safer areas of the house to prevent irreparable damages.  

• Vacate the Premises if Necessary – You likely need to get out of the house to allow mitigation and restoration to occur.  

Are Emergency Services Necessary?  

Emergency services often occur before mitigation; the job scoping determines the full extent of the damage to the property. These preemptive tasks can help to reduce the spread and severity of flood conditions for later recovery efforts. We can conduct a few standard emergency services at our experienced emergency response team and our in-house contractors as soon as our team arrives, including: 

• Extraction – Surface water can penetrate exposed materials and continue to threaten the affected areas with more concentrated contaminants such as bacteria. With tools like our trash pumps and truck-mount pumps, we can remove surface water with debris quickly.  

• Controlled Demolition – Our contractors must determine what materials and structural elements are too compromised to restore. While it is one of our priorities to reduce rebuilding as much as possible, controlled demolition ensures that build back is more efficient and less expensive. 

• Muck-Out – Lingering debris, mud, and other solids left behind after water extraction can be hazardous for those exposed. We have several muck-out strategies, including wet vacuuming and shoveling, to manage the situation as efficiently as possible.  

What Are the Threats of Natural Flooding?  

Natural flooding can be one of the biggest threats to a residence, as we consider this penetrating water contaminated before it ever enters the house. As a blackwater incident, floodwater comes into contact with many different substances and contaminants in its path to your home. While our SERVPRO professionals have an extensive line of EPA-Approved cleaning products and practices, we limit our exposure to these threats as much as possible. Full personal protective equipment and containment barriers can help keep our team and the home's occupants protected from: 

• Bacteria
• Viral Pathogens
• Mud
• Sewage
• Oils/Chemicals 

Natural flooding can be a substantial threat to residences in the area. Despite how challenging it might initially feel to make these flood losses, "Like it never even happened," our SERVPRO of Patchogue team can help. Contact us anytime at (631) 924-1801.