Fire Damage Cleanup After Lightning Strikes Your Phoenix Home

1/17/2018 (Permalink)

When lightning strikes your home, it is likely fires will start in the attic and inside the walls.

SERVPRO is Here to Help When Fire Damage Strikes

If you realize your home in Phoenix has been hit by lightning, you should call the fire department. It is common for fires to start in the attic and inside walls of homes when lightning strikes directly. These fires inside enclosed spaces might not be visible when they first start. Often, lightning which passes through a house branches and uses more than one path to ground at a time. It can jump from one conductive path to another as well.

Lightning can quickly start a fire and create fire damage to your Phoenix home. Once the fire is out, the damage can continue due to smoke and soot. SERVPRO can help you clean up this soot covering in your home and prevent additional damages. Once you contact us, we waste no time in getting to your home to help you.

Some soot residues are more straightforward to clean than others. Each fire goes through stages and crates both dry and wet smoke. Wet smoke is usually more difficult to clean.

More kinds of materials can be restored when exposed to dry smoke than wet. Dry smoke residues contain fewer aerosols and deposit small, dry particles on surfaces. It also does not stain surfaces as deeply as wet smoke, plus the odor is not as pungent. SERVPRO staff use cleaning procedures that are less aggressive to get rid of residues from dry smoke.

Restoration, when wet smoke residues are present, is more difficult, as they are harder to clean. Wet smoke usually has a high number of aerosols like solvents, varnishes, and other liquid components. During a slow-burning fire, air currents do not drive the smoke from the fire’s heat. Wet smoke also moves slowly and has time to get into crevices and enclosed areas which generally would not get contaminated by a fire that is burning fast.

Many times, contents exposed to wet smoke and a smoldering fire cannot be restored. Aerosols found in wet smoke penetrate and stain finished surfaces, and unfinished surfaces absorbed and entrap the residues.

SERVPRO of Central Phoenix knows how to clean up all kinds of smoke residues, so your home in Encanto, Midtown Phoenix or Camelback East is thoroughly restored after a fire. Just get in touch with us at (602) 386-4268 as soon as the fire is out.

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