Following a basement flood at a property in London, DisasterCare South East were removing all the contents up to street level in order to transport to their unit for further assessment and restoration works, when an opportunist thief on a bicycle took advantage of the situation and made off with an electric strimmer.

Eagle eyed technician Lewis Lewery noticed the theft and immediately took off on foot in pursuit of the thief, and after a chase he managed to catch the chancer on the nearby subway and retrieved the strimmer.

“It’s all in a days work” said Lewis. “I saw him grab the strimmer and my first reaction was to chase him and retrieve it, so we could list it on our inventory. Fortunately I was fit enough to catch up with him and he just handed it straight back to me. I hope it proves to be a useful item for the policy holder and brings them many more years of service”.

The claim was for contents and mitigation of a flood damaged basement, used for storage, which had up to 15 cms ingress of standing water following flash flooding.

Following removal of the standing water and mitigation, a drying regime was put in place to dry the basement ready for the policy holders builders to strip out and reinstate the damaged parts of the structure.

DisasterCare’s contents restoration team also restored a large double wardrobe, Chinese room dividers and a large double mirror which were affected by the storm water.

In addition, DisasterCare’s Home Emergency network were called in to check and make good the electrics which were considered unsafe due to the flood.