After a fire, a house has three kinds of damage at once: what burned, what the smoke reached, and what the water from putting it out soaked into. They're dealt with together, and the order matters.
Call (206) 813-0805Don't go back in until the fire department says the building is safe to enter. Utilities may have been shut off for a reason. Leave them off until they've been checked.
Call your insurer early. Take photos and video of every room before anything is moved or thrown away — including things that look ruined.
If the house is open to the weather — broken windows, a hole in the roof — it needs boarding up and covering. Ask about that on the first call, because rain getting in makes everything worse.
Don't run the furnace or air conditioning until the system has been checked. It spreads soot through every room it reaches.
Putting a house fire out takes a great deal of water, and it doesn't stay in the room that burned. It runs through floors into the rooms below, soaks into insulation and wall cavities, and sits there. In a wet Puget Sound fall or winter, it doesn't dry on its own.
That's why fire restoration starts like a flood job: extraction and drying, checked with moisture readings, before the smoke and rebuild work. Left wet, the parts the fire never touched can end up with mold.
Keep anything you're unsure of until it's been looked at, and until your insurer has seen it.
Sometimes, if the fire was contained to one area and the fire department says it's safe. But smoke and soot travel much further than the flames did, and staying in a house with soot through it isn't healthy, especially for children, older people or anyone with breathing problems. Ask your insurer about temporary accommodation — many policies cover it.
Because the water used to put it out didn't stay in the kitchen. It ran into the floor, the rooms below and the walls. That water needs extracting and drying like any other flood, or it leads to mold in parts of the house the fire never touched.
Better not. Soot smears, and wiping it with the wrong cleaner can push it into paint, plaster and fabric permanently. Some soot is oily and some is dry, and each is cleaned differently. Leave it, photograph it, and let the cleanup start with the right method.
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