Property Loss Recovery
Fire Damage Restoration
When a fire incident occurs, your business operations will come to a halt. The first 24 to 48 hours after a fire incident are critical for recovery. An effective emergency response that quickly stabilises the facility and equipment, ensures the recovery of as much property as possible. The acidic composition of soot and smoke damage that is a by-product of the incomplete combustion of various materials during fires, accelerates the deterioration and corrosion of building components and vital assets. To compound the problem, fires are most frequently extinguished with dry chemicals or water.
Why is property damage recovery and mitigation an important first step?
Damage to equipment and machinery does not stop when the disaster incident stops. In fact, most of the damage to equipment, machinery and building contents which were not in direct contact with the fire occurs after the fire incident This is due to the onset of corrosion on exposed metallic surfaces, which starts from the moment soot gets into contact with exposed metallic surfaces. In addition, mould growth on surfaces occurs as a result of exposure to fire extinguisher water and high humidity environments.
You can freeze the corrosion process and mould growth by performing loss mitigation measures. This may include stabilising environmental conditions with specialist equip- ment to control humidity levels, pre-cleaning and applying preservation chemicals to protect surfaces from corrosion. Loss mitigation helps to buy you time while assessing what steps you should take next.
By stopping the deterioration process, you give yourself options; option to decide whether equipment should be replaced, option to repair machines that may take up to a year or more to be replaced, option to start operations as quickly as possible with the existing machines following a recovery when there is a time pressure to meet customers’ demands and or contractual obligations.
Machinery and Equipment Recovery after a Fire
A fire incident can lead to machinery and equipment being exposed to high temperatures, potentially corrosive contami-nation in gaseous form, and electrically conducive contamination in the form of soot.
Our specialists will use multi-step cleaning process to dissemble, degrease, remove corrosion and reapply surface protection to prevent rusting. This is done using proprietary BELFOR agents and BELFOR techniques such as ultrasonic cleaning, high pressure spray or manual cleaning by our specialists.
Building and Contents Recovery after a Fire
A fire can cause soot contamination which can be harmful to health. Our specialists can clean and restore building structure surfaces and content items, depending on the de-gree of damage. Interiors such as damaged walls, windows and HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air conditioning) systems will be cleaned, repaired or replaced, depending on the extent of the damage.
Document Recovery after a Fire
Critical documents and data can be contaminated or damaged during fire incidents. BELFOR has the capability to recover a wide range of documents, utilising our freeze-drying technique. Documents are frozen immediately to prevent further damage. We use vacuum-freeze dryers, thermal vacuum-freeze dryers and molecular sieves specially designed to restore books, documents and paper materials. After drying is complete, often no further restoration is required.
