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The Fire Damage Case Study 1: The Fire After The Fire!
Jason Yost • November 25, 2022
The Fire Damage Case Study 1: The Fire After The Fire!
The following is a true story that demonstrates why it is so important that fire damage restoration technicians understand the hazards associated with the environments they work and the cost of their not knowing.
Late one night a call came into a local restoration company from a person that had experienced a house fire. They wanted to secure the structure while they waited for their insurance company’s clearance of coverage; they also wanted an estimate for the restoration of their home. That night the “on-call technician” responded with plywood boards, screws and his battery powered drill to “board-up” the house.
The next day the house rekindled and burned to the ground. There was nothing left to restore.
Overnight and during the early hours of the next day, the kindling debris released heat into the enclosed space, increasing the temperature and creating internal dehumidification (i.e., dehydration) of the indoor environment. This fueled the kindling building components, led to reignition, and, ultimately, the destruction of the home.
While water was used to put the initial fire out, the quick boarding up of this structure created an encapsulated environment where, once the heat was trapped indoors (for it could no longer exchange its heat with the external environment without passing through the building components), the ambient air’s thirst rose – that is, it was able to hold more moisture in grains of moisture per pound of air. This increased the rate of evaporation. The quicken rate of evaporation began to pull moisture from all the building components. The release of this moisture created a situation where oxygen levels were increasing without outside exchange. All of this took place around the boards used to secure the home, causing the fire to rekindle.
This is a good example of what happens when an undirected technician responds to a fire without foreknowledge of the potential hazards and the resulting property damage. In our next Case Study, we will look at an example of physical harm because of a lack of professional direction when responding to a fire damage.
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