What Should I Decontaminate After Flood Damage?

12/7/2021 (Permalink)

Floodwater contains contaminants. We have the PPE to safely remediate the water and restore your home.

SERVPRO Can Help You Manage the Multifaceted Process of Removing Contamination When Flood Damage Affects Your North Redington Beach Property

Before you think of what to decontaminate, you should probably ask yourself why you need to decontaminate your property. SERVPRO has resourceful crews that can respond to flooding situations in North Redington Beach properties seven days a week.

What Indicates Contamination in a Flooded Property?

You may question whether all the areas where you notice flood damage in your North Redington Beach property are contaminated, thus necessitating sanitizing. The filthy floodwater pollutes all the places it reaches since it contains many contaminants, including chemicals such as herbicides and biological pathogens. However, contamination can spread to the rest of the house too. From experience, our SERVPRO crews understand that pollutants can migrate further around the property:

• If microbial growth in wet areas is not halted
• Through the movement of people and materials around the property
• If contaminants are aerosolized when using air movers to dry the property
  

Therefore, decontamination should factor in all these issues to guarantee the restoration of sanitary conditions in the house.

Which Areas Should I Decontaminate?

• Surfaces
• Deep within materials
• The air

The best approach when addressing contamination is to take a holistic approach that reaches all the areas where harmful materials might accumulate. Our SERVPRO technicians can assist you with this. For instance, we perform controlled demolition to remove all porous materials affected by the floodwaters. We also use cleaning products with the correct chemical agents, including Phenolics and Quaternary compounds, which neutralize contaminants effectively.

When contaminants might be aerosolized during the drying phase, we incorporate AFD, air filtration devices in the process. The devices have layered filtration systems with poly-pun primary filters and HEPA filters, ensuring the removal of 99.97% of particles and contaminants from the air.

Understanding how contamination affects your property helps ease the cleanup process. Call SERVPRO of Seminole & Central Gulf Beaches at (727) 391-6212 to help. We're Faster To Any Size Disaster.