Flooding, extending from the Midwestern states to the east coast of the U.S., has caused unforeseen devastation and cleanup costs. States affected by floodwaters include Iowa, Delaware, Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and more. The causes of the floods are due to severe thunderstorms in the north and along the Atlantic Coast that filled rivers and lakes, and Tropical Depression Bonnie, which brewed in the Gulf of Mexico, according to Reuters.
Clean-Up Tips
Now that the storms are gone, residents in the flood-damaged states are left to clean the devastation in extreme heat. To those cleaning up after the aftermath of the natural disasters, consider the following tips:
Take pictures of all the damage to your property and write notes about it on a piece of paper. When individuals are stressed-out important information can easily slip their memory, and this type of documentation is helpful when making a claim with an insurance company or are seeking remediation assistance.
Use water cautiously. While water from wells may be okay for bathing in, only drink bottled water or water you boiled.
Start cleaning flood-damaged items as soon as you know it is safe to do so. Heat and moisture are the perfect breeding grounds for mold. Mold can grow in as little as three days, so it is to one’s advantage to act quickly, especially when it comes to wet documents, wet books and photographs. This is something business owners need to act quickly on so they can get back in business ASAP.
See if FEMA has declared a disaster in your area. Checkout their mobile site, m.fema.gov, and apply for disaster aid on your Smartphone.
Call in the experts. The assistance of a disaster restoration company can help you make sure your wet items are completely dry and mold-free so you do not have reoccurring mold problems and damage in the future.
While storms are scary and the aftermath is stressful, you have the power get your life back to normal quickly when you clean the water damage correctly. Learn more about what to do after a flood.
When there is a fire in a building, the sprinkler system and firefighters’ efforts can be a saving grace. However, if the sprinklers went off in your home or office, would you run inside the building to gather items that would be irreplaceable if damaged by water? Did you know that you do not have to risk your life and safety for fear that precious books, photos and documents may get wet?
Although fire sprinklers can help slow the spread of a fire in a building, they can also cause water damage to electronic equipment, walls, carpets and so on. To help address this problem, “The Washington Post” suggests placing valuables in plastic zipper bags and storing them on the lower levels of a building, off the floor. However, the plastic zipper bags will only do so much if they burn in a fire.
While storing items in plastic bags is not a horrible idea, there are other steps people can take in a home or office to prevent water and fire damage from occurring to important documents and personal items in the event of a fire.
The first is to invest in a water and fireproof file cabinet and/or safe and use it. Store your important documents and personal items in a file cabinet or safe on a daily basis. These items can include deeds, photograph negatives, contracts, books and other things of value. Learn other water and fire-damage prevention techniques.
Rapid Refile recently completed a project for a medical office in southwest Reading, Pennsylvania that suffered extensive damage from a two-alarm fire. Although the cause of the fire was not immediately known, officials think it started on the roof, which had wooden beams inside of it. It did not take long for the flames to consume the entire rooftop. Although the medical office had a fire alarm, the local fire department never received the signal it sends when the alarm sounds. The firefighters only learned about the blaze from neighbors who called 9-1-1. A report from the “Reading Eagle” states the medical office’s “roof was destroyed and the interior was charred.”
Water and smoke-damaged documents
Preparing documents to be restored
After the fire, Rapid Refile was contracted to help remediate the building’s extensively damaged medical documents. Medical documents the professionals at Rapid Refile can help restore include water-damaged documents, x-rays, wet books and damaged photographs. By calling Rapid Refile, the medical office was able to prevent mold growth and deterioration caused by the fire’s smoke and soot, which would have caused further damage to the documents, and aided in business continuity. The professionals at Rapid Refile handle all medical documents per HIPPA standards and handle sensitive materials with strict protocols to ensure the privacy of those served by medical offices.
City Hall in the City of New Rochelle, NY experienced the devastation a burst pipe can bring when this very event happened during the 2010 Easter weekend. According to “Sound Shore,” city government workers tried to do the clean up on their own for a few weeks before realizing professional help was the only way to salvage their building and restore damaged, wet documentsthat belonged to the Development and Parks & Recreation Departments. The City of New Rochelle called in Rapid Refile help save essential documents.
Rapid Refile to the Rescue
Rapid Refile quickly arrived to New Rochelle to meet with city officials to discuss recovery options, and was able to prepare an emergency bid in less than four hours. They restored the city’s documents by drying them, decontaminating them via gamma irradiation and cleaning them of surface debris and mold.
Rapid Refile met the contracted deadline and proudly delivered the remediated documents to the City of New Rochelle’s Development and Parks & Recreation departments on time. It was essential these departments receive the restored documents in a timely manner because the start of the summer season demands the use of them. A staff person from Rapid Refile reports, “During the inspection of work performed by Rapid Refile, one administrator in the Parks & Recreations department stated, ‘I’m very glad to have this back. This is like our Bible.’”
One of the worst nightmares of a file clerk in a hospital or even a small-town doctor is finding patient records and other medical documents damaged by water, humidity, mold or a fire. When medical documents are damaged, they will only get worse with time. To help those in the medical field solve this dilemma, Rapid Refile provided instructions on what to do to recover critical medical documents in Facility Care magazine.
Hire a document restoration vendor. Choose a restoration company that offers in-house reclamation services. Doing this will improve the lines of communication between the client and the vendor and speed up business continuity.
Provide a HIPPA partnership agreement to a representative in the recovery firm. This will allow the restoration company to inventory the wet documents, remove them from the affected area and stabilize the damage. Joe Perko for Rapid Refile states, “Recording the location and order of documents ensures a proper chain of custody and enables an efficient reintegration of documents once reclamation services are complete.”
Begin the document reclamation process. Restoration specialists should load inventoried boxes into a monitored freezer trailer so they can immediately be reclaimed at the document reclamation center. At the center, professionals will either vacuum freeze dry or desiccant dry the wet documents and wet books. In addition, restoration professionals may reproduce files digitally so they can provide copies of these important documents to the client quickly. The restoration company should provide the client with a Certificate of Destruction.
