Water and Fire Damage Go Together

6/25/2021 (Permalink)

Do you know the saying that “where there’s smoke, there’s fire?”

It’s accurate, but not comprehensive. The fact of that matter is that when there’s fire, there’s a whole lot of other types of damage, especially water damage.

Water Damage After a Fire

How do you put out a fire?

There are multiple answers to this question, but most commonly, the answer is lots and lots and lots of water.

If your fire prevention system goes off, then it will release enough water in an area localized around the fire to put the fire out. Unlike what you see in movies, not all of your sprinklers will go off – just the ones that need to.

If the fire department responds and has to break out the hoses, it might be a different story. Fire hoses put out huge amounts of water at extremely high pressures designed to battle even the fiercest blazes out there.

They’re excellent for putting out fires. But they also leave a ton of water behind.

The fire department is often very skilled at mitigating this water damage on their own, especially in large multi-level commercial buildings. They may even send in a team just to direct the flow of water to the least damaging areas once the fire has been put out.

This is the point where people often call in SERVPRO. They’re sometimes surprised, when we show up on site, that our first priority is not cleaning up after the fire. Instead, we focus on dealing with the water damage.

That’s because, unlike the extinguished fire, water has the potential to cause additional damage if it is not dealt with immediately. It can soak into your structure, wick into your floors and cause all sorts of problems, including the outbreak of mold.

So the first thing we do at a fire is often extraction. Once we get the water out and start to dry the structure, then we can focus on cleaning up after the fire and purifying the air.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But if all goes well, there’s water, too.