There’s nothing that can prepare us when we first see the first sign of water entering our house during the beginning of the flood. Seeing the interior of our house damaged, filthy and wet can hurt us mentally down to our very core. However, once the flood recedes; it is important for us to start recover from the condition. This is a good time to start our cleanup project and we should be able return to our normal lives. We also have health-related reasons to make sure that our house is properly cleaned. Unaddressed water damage can be quite unhealthy for our family. The longer we wait, the more severe water damage can get. Cleaning up task after a flood can be dangerous, expensive, exhausting and time consuming. There are also things that can actually be salvaged, such as irreplaceable old pictures, books and other things. Humidity can slowly damage many items in our house, even if we manage to put them to the attic, before the flood reached its highest water mark.
We should immediately do the cleaning job and let our insurer worries about everything else. If our house has regular size, we should be able to clean it up; although it may take 2-3 days. However, if our house is quite big, it may be important to pay someone to help us. Before entering a recently flooded house, we should make sure that it’s safe and we may need to make sure that the electricity and gas has been shut off from the main panel. However, it is likely that the utility companies already terminate services on affected areas. We will need to remove standing water in our home. If our house has a basement, this can be a particularly big job and we may need a pump to drain it and remove all the mud and water-damaged items.
Once the water is out and much of the muck has been removed; we will still need to do many things. It is important to go through our belongings and find out things that we can use. Organic and porous items will likely be damaged and we need to throw them away. Unless we are able to put them in the attic, electronics will no longer be usable. Clothing will need to be washed with bleach and the one made from 100 percent cotton could no longer be wearable. The drywall is likely wet and we will need to remove it. We can use them again, if they can still be cleaned and there’s no permanent water damage. By removing drywall, we can allow the supporting structure to get completely dry.
After everything is dry and cleaned completely, we can start to rearrange our interior and exterior. Because, many things needs to be thrown away; this would be an opportunity to remove clutter and make our house looks even cleaner and organized before the flood devastated our house.
