Fires spark costly, time-consuming restoration process
The cleanup process that followed took nine weeks and stretched from the basement floor to the third floor ceiling. On Friday, four months after the fire, the building reopened for business.
A mid-December fire at The
Situations like these may be relatively rare and may seem remote from the average homeowner, but they provide a valuable reminder that everyone should heed, according to
"Make sure you go over your insurance policy every year," Kincaid said. "Once you have a loss, it's too late."
The library and The
For the library, particularly, Kincaid said, the first order of business was controlling humidity. Not only did the fire cause smoke damage, it destroyed the building's heating system and the process of extinguishing the fire left behind plenty of water.
Books are quick to absorb moisture, but removing it can be all but impossible and the warping effects it causes are irreversible. The combination of moisture and the skin cells that readers shed and leave behind makes for a perfect breeding ground for mold and mildew.
After bringing in commercial dehumidifiers powerful enough to "suck the water out of the toilets" if needed, Kincaid said, a crew of about 40 people went over every book and every surface in the building to clean the residue left by smoke.
That meant wiping down about 50,000 volumes of books, periodicals and other materials that were in the building at the time of the fire, according to
Given the tightly packed nature of book shelves, Kincaid said, many books could be cleaned quickly by wiping the covers inside and out as well as the outer edges of the pages.
"Smoke leaves a residue -- that I didn't realize," said
Unlike books, magazines often had to be wiped page by page -- and with no dawdling to read the articles.
Very few items, Minnis said, such as some puppets and posters, couldn't be saved. Luckily, she said, the signed Danny the Dinosaur drawing from
Within about two weeks, Kincaid said, smoke residue had been cleaned from the books on the shelves, the shelves themselves and all other surfaces and contents within the library.
Crews from
"It was amazing to see the things they were trying to do while they were shut down," Meredith recalled. Her teams had plenty of time to see those efforts up close as flooding from January's ice jam left them stranded away from home at one point.
Once the humidity concerns had been addressed in both locations and smoke had been cleaned, work moved onto odor remediation, which included preparing for new paint and carpets, according to both Meredith and Kincaid.
At the library, after the walls had been cleaned, they were sealed and painted, the carpets were torn out and ceiling tiles were removed. Work went on in less visible areas as well, according to Kincaid, as all of the duct work had to be cleaned and heating units throughout the building had to be pulled apart, sanitized and put back in place.
"The last thing we did was put an all-new drop ceiling in the basement," Kincaid said. "About 9,000 square feet."
After more than two months of recovery work, he said, the final bill to the insurance company was almost
The best way to be prepared for disaster, Kincaid reiterated, is to have appropriate insurance and to know what that insurance covers. No one wants to be asking if their insurance covers sewer backups after the sewage has backed up.
When disaster strikes, he said, the immediate response is crucial as well.
"Once something happens," Kincaid said, "get a hold of a reputable company that deals with nothing but restoration."
Such companies have a clear goal when they finish their work, according to
"It's supposed to look exactly the way they left it," she said. "Our motto is, 'Make it look like it never even happened.'"
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