45 bags of contents rescued from housing association property fire
Miss Clear lives in housing association property with her son and pets. A fire at the next door property caused damage to the outside and smoke damage inside the property.
Background
Miss Clear’s neighbours had a BBQ and put their hot ash in their bin and left this in their bin shed. The metal front door melted along with the bin.
This caused damage to customer’s front door outside of the property c, also causing excessive smoke damage throughout her property.
The customer and her family were all unharmed and have managed to move in with her mum until they can return to property.
DisasterCare South Central were able to meet the customer onsite within 24 hours of the fire. We removed all soft contents from the property, a total of 45 bags.
| Client | Miss Clear |
|---|---|
| Location | Chichester, Sussex |
| Loss Date | 30/04/2020 |
| First Attended Site | 15/04/2020 |
| Duration of Claim | 7 Days |
| Replacement Value | £26,986.32 |
| Restoration/Clean Cost | £10,247.43 |
| Insurance Savings | £16,738.89 |
| Total Number of Items Restored | 1068 |
| Total Ber/Not Restored | 19 |
| Success Rate | 98% |
Main Issues – Day 2
The property had lots of smoke damage throughout, our team began going through the property to gather all soft contents. Our main aim this day was to ensure we had all the soft contents as the customer was left with clothes they had on and required the items back as soon as possible.
Day 3—Soft Contents Facility
All soft contents we removed from the property had soot damage. All soft items were cleaned and processed through our exclusive soft contents machine known as ‘DC-4000’. All remaining contents were successfully cleaned to a high standard, wrapped and packed out into storage awaiting to return to the customer. The process took 7 days in total.
“The DC-4000 is now a pivotal player in our Restoration Industry. The DC-4000 is the newest in a line if highly advanced, game-changing washing systems designed to clean 90% of soft contents, our third-party independent laboratory testing has verified that the DC4000 Wash System restores heavy soot, mould and Category 2 & 3 water damaged contents to food grade clean standard”
Total Duration for textile Processing and pack out: 7 Days
If this had been a small fire in the house and these net curtains ended up like top picture most people would put them in the bin. Look at the results.
This bed cover has lots of soot in the far corner of the top picture. The soot has completely come out, and the bed covers are useable again.
This skirt when first brought to a facility and photographed one if our staff thought it was a grey/silver in colour. It is very clear to see how much damage can be caused by soot.
The after picture shows how good our restoration process is and how much we can save by this process. This skirt cost about £30 which costs us £7 to restore which doesn’t seem much different however if you have 1000 items and manage to restore them all it adds up.
Processing – Soft Contents Restoration
All Miss Clear’s clothing had been processed as a high priority due to the need for clothing for the whole family – All were returned to the customer within 7 Days. We were able to return all soft contents to the customers temporary property for her on day 7.
Impacts/Outcome
Due to the type of contamination from the fire it was clear that we had to act quickly so we set a 7-day target for all soft contents to be cleaned and processed. We attended the site and collected all items within 24 hours of the claim being received. Throughout the whole process communication was made regularly to inform the customer of the outcomes of the contents being restored.
Impact to the customer was always kept to a minimum due to quick acting of DisasterCare South Central who were able to process all the soft contents through our soft content’s restoration facility, part of this facility is our exclusive DC4000 machine.
Customer Contents
Below photograph shows the customer soft contents in our secure unit awaiting to be boxed up, before returning them to the customer.
