Storm Experience

2/7/2020 (Permalink)

Anytime I get the chance to travel for work, I take it. Storm season is usually a crazy time, but I enjoy a challenge. It’s nice to be able to travel and see new places. It’s also quite interesting to me to be able to see the damage caused by natural disasters. We are living SERVPRO's motto of Here to Help.

In 2018, we traveled to North Carolina to help clean up damage caused by Hurricane Michael. One of my main jobs on that trip with managing the demo and dry out of a ten-unit condo complex. Five units on the first floor and five units on the second floor. Wind damaged the roof and the rain had flooded both levels. At the time of our arrival, all units had also been affected by a pretty hefty amount of microbial growth. Because of the damage, all units had to be gutted down to the studs and remediated before the dry out could begin.

One of the Challenges of completing the structural dry out it is first we must inventory the contents. Unfortunately, the damage from this event destroyed most of the tenants belongings. During these events, many community members come together and help each other with the removal of wet materials. We leaned on local help to make this project go quickly and smoothly. As you can imagine, with big jobs like this, we had a ton of trash. By the time the demo was done, we had about six massive piles of trash, which wasn’t even able to get picked up by a trash company until the very end of our work. Once the demo was complete, about one hundred pieces of dry equipment were set up to dry out what was still wet. 

With everyone’s help, the whole process took about two weeks. Every day was ten-hour days, plus drive time. The hotel was about an hour to an hour and a half away, depending on traffic. It was quite the experience to manage such a big job. It was a lot of stressful work, but I would do it again in a heartbeat.