How Can I Clean Up After Flash Flooding in My Middletown House?

5/14/2020 (Permalink)

Warmer weather brings storms and flash flooding. Should water invade your home, call SERVPRO!

SERVPRO can help you to dry, clean, and disinfect your home after destructive flooding after severe weather conditions  

Flash flooding in Middletown can be a considerable challenge when water penetrates the exterior of your home to collect in areas like the basement, crawlspace, or first floor of the residence. Along with substantial standing water, other factors can make flooding a situation best left to the experienced professionals of our SERVPRO team. 

With storm flood damage to Middletown homes, there are many stages to restore and recover the entire affected area. Because of how quickly our SERVPRO professionals can respond to storm loss emergencies, you are not waiting for days for vital efforts like extraction, drying, and disinfection. From the time that our professionals arrive, we can begin vital mitigation efforts to lessen the impact of debilitating floodwater. 

How Destructive is Flash Flooding to Homes? 

Natural flooding, in general, can have severe consequences for exposed structural elements, contents, and occupants of a damaged house. With the pace and destructive power of flash flooding, occupants of the structure have little time to react to changing conditions before it is no longer safe for them to remain in the house. Understanding what must occur to recover this damaged property falls into several categories of tasks beginning as soon as our professionals reach your home. Some of the hazards present with flash flooding include: 

Debris and Solids – debris in the intruding water can be hazardous to the house for many reasons. Without adequate extraction and cleaning beginning right away, many floors and wall systems throughout the structure can become exposed to mud, dirt, debris, silt, and many other solids. 

• Standing Water – Standing water can be threatening to your property, primarily because of the damage that it can do when water absorbs into exposed structural elements or exposure to live electrical currents. 

• Structural Damages – While absorption can lead to structural deterioration, the force of flash flooding alone can damage siding, plywood, drywall, and other materials in the path of invading water.  

• Contamination - All-natural flooding scenarios have to get treated as though contaminants exist, even though there are no fast and simple ways of determining what all potential health hazards could exist. Drying up the structure can pave the way for intricate cleaning and disinfection with wipe cleaning practices and ULV foggers.  

What Steps Need to be Taken Right Away After Flooding?  

Between emergency services and mitigation, some steps must immediately get taken if you intend to preserve exposed structural elements, contents, or other damaged areas. The faster that these practices can get implemented, the less devastating and costly the later restoration becomes. Addressing the many threats of natural flooding involves efficient practices such as: 

• Extraction – removing standing water in Middletown is often one of the first things that our SERVPRO technicians must do when responding to a flood loss. Surface water can penetrate materials quickly, making it a challenge to dry or perform debris removal in affected areas of the house until pooling has gotten addressed.  

• Muck-Out – Debris removal and muck-out services are a way to limit the exposure of technicians and occupants of the house to the potential contaminants that could have gotten carried into the structure. Shoveling and wet vacuuming can reduce this layer of rubbish to reduce concentrations of bacteria or other hazards.  

• Content Management – Protecting what matters most means having professionals to care for your personal belongings with the same experience and consideration that they provide your house. With on and off-site recovery options, we can restore many of the exposed belongings to their original conditions. 

• Air and Surface Cleaning – Emergency services and early mitigation often include cleaning the environment as best as possible. Potential contaminants exist in a workspace both on surfaces and in the air, so we need HEPA filtration equipment to reduce airborne microbes and potent chemical solvents and antibacterial products for wipe cleaning surfaces.  

Are There Trained Professionals to Handle Contamination?  

Our SERVPRO team can handle not only the extraction and drying of your home following a flooding incident but also the decontamination and cleaning. Because natural flooding is a blackwater incident, meaning that it can contain harmful and hazardous contaminants, we utilize our highly trained biohazard recovery professionals to oversee the safe cleaning of your home to make it safe and sanitary. These technicians are among the most well-trained in our roster, acquiring education and certification from: 

• Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC)
• Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA)
• American Bio Recovery Association (ABRA) 

Flash flooding can be overwhelming and destructive for your home, but our SERVPRO of Middletown / New Britain team can help. Contact us today at (860) 826-5169.