"Storm Leaves Cleanup Crews to Deal With Flooded Basements"

4/12/2016 (Permalink)

"When it rains it literally pours for us"

On June 7th 2013 our SERVPRO crew was placed in WSET after a storm caused a lot of homes in the Lynchburg, Virginia area to flood.  Below is the article written with comments from, at the time, Crew Chief-Adam Evans who is now one of our Project Managers.

Lynchburg, VA - The rain that drenched our area is over, the clouds have parted, but not everyone is in the clear. For some, even a little storm can mean a basement full of water. It's a mess to have to clean up, not to mention it can be dangerous if it's not cleaned properly.

For some, all the inches of rain we had here in the Hill City, wound up in their basement.

"You can see the base of the door, all the way down here, where the water was up about this high, and when I opened the back door it all just kind of came in like a wave" said Cheri Hammer.

Hammer's home was hammered by inches of rain, all of which wound up in her basement.

"The books, and the memorabilia and stuff like that, it's heartache. Because you do, you're throwing away memories."

Hammer was left with four inches of water in her basement. Her sump pump, used to drain rain water from around the outside of the house failed during the storm.

"When it rains it literally pours for us" said SERVPRO Cleaning Crew Worker, Adam Evans.

Workers from clean up companies like the ones in Hammer's basement have their work cut out for them.

"We're getting the carpet and pad up and then we're going to get the rest of the standing water up" said Evans.

The first thing the experts say you've got to do when water hits your home is dry it up.

"In general we can dry most floor coverings but then there's some that there's just no safe way to dry them without risking any kind of mold contamination and they have to get removed and replaced" said Evans.

Vinyl and ceramic tile almost always have to be replaced after flooding. And the most important part of cleaning up after a flood is making sure every drop of water is gone.

"If you have continuous water problems, you could have wet rot, and eventually that could be a structure issue" said Evans.

This time, a lesson learned for Hammer, "Yeah I'm lucky. I know there's a lot of people here in the area that have probably lost a whole lot more than we did."

It will take days to completely dry out Hammer's basement. If you didn't have as much flooding as Hammer did you can try and clean up yourself. Evans suggested after water is removed, extensive cleaning must be done to ensure no mold or mildew will remain."

http://wset.com/archive/storm-leaves-cleanup-crews-to-deal-with-flooded-basements