Kitchen Fire Damage Restoration
A house fire is a traumatic and potentially deadly catastrophe that requires professional expertise to repair. Kitchen accidents are a leading cause of house fires: of the 360,000 residential fires reported by the Insurance Information Institute per year, approximately 170,000 originate in the kitchen.
When a calm evening cooking dinner turns into a fiery nightmare, it’s essential that you respond quickly and call the leading kitchen fire damage restoration experts at PacWest Restoration for immediate assistance. You can reach us 24/7 at 503-746-6545 for prompt fire damage cleanup that gets your life back on track and keeps your family safe from the lingering effects of a house fire.
Causes of Kitchen Fires
Kitchen fires can result from several different activities, which is why they are one of the major causes of structure fires in residential buildings. Some of the most common causes include the following.
Cooking
It’s critical that you stay close to the stove whenever you’re cooking, particularly if you are using a gas stove. You may believe you have plenty of time to run upstairs and wake your kids up for school while making scrambled eggs, but it only takes a small drip of grease to ignite the stove and set the whole kitchen ablaze.
Whenever you are working with the stove, keep it within line of sight. If you have to step away for whatever reason, turn it off: it’s better to take a bit longer to make your meal than to find yourself battling an inferno.
Electrical Problems
Even the most well-maintained building may have hidden electrical issues that erupt into a major fire. This could be due to shoddy or outdated wiring that doesn’t have a high enough capacity for your needs, or it could be from grease or water splashed on electrical outlets that causes a short circuit.
Gas Leaks
Those who use gas-powered appliances like stoves and ovens must be especially cautious, as a small gas leak can lead to a huge explosion. Gas lines may come loose, particularly if you move the stove to clean behind it, which then leads to highly flammable vapors escaping. One small spark will ignite the gas, potentially leading to a severely fire-damaged house.
Faulty Kitchen Appliances
Electrical appliances, while they make life much easier, can also lead to tragedy. A poorly designed or aged appliance may short-circuit or overheat, which causes it to catch fire. As it is likely plugged in, this can cause a chain reaction and result in widespread structural damage.
Always unplug your devices when they’re not in use and check them carefully to ensure that their electrical components are intact. Never use a device that has fraying wires, singe marks, or damage to its electrical housing; when it doubt, throw it out. You should also check recall sites to ensure your products have not been recalled due to faulty components.
How to Prevent Kitchen Fires?
While it’s not always possible to prevent a kitchen fire, there are many steps you can take to drastically reduce their likelihood and protect your personal property – as well as your life. Care, caution, and maintenance can go a long way toward keeping you and your loved ones safe while whipping up your favorite dish.
Get Regular Inspections
Rely on professionals to come check out your outlets, gas connections, and appliances on a regular basis to ensure that they are working properly. If you notice that a certain outlet seems to short out regularly, don’t use it again; cap it and call an electrician right away, who can assess the problem and make sure that the rest of the electrical system is working properly. You should also call in an expert to check your stove and gas burners on a regular basis.
Have a Fire Extinguisher
A fire extinguisher can be a lifesaver if you are dealing with a small, contained fire, sparing you further damage and reducing your restoration costs. Use an approved fire extinguisher from a reputable company. You will need to get your fire extinguishers recharged on a regular basis, which can usually be done for free at your local fire department.
The average 5lb household fire extinguisher can put out a fire no larger than 10 square feet, but their spray only lasts between 30 seconds and 1 minute. Given how fast fires can spread, you have a very limited time frame in which to put out the fire, which is why you should always call emergency services the instant that a fire breaks out. Don’t simply assume that your extinguisher will be able to contain the fire completely.
Don’t Wear Flammable, Loose Clothing
Never put fashion first when it comes to preventing fire damage. When cooking, wear short sleeves and tie up long hair so that you don’t accidentally brush against an open flame. A firmly tied apron is helpful to ensure that your clothing doesn’t hang over the stove, and it also protects your favorite outfit from splashes.
While it’s tempting to simply wrap your hand in a long sleeve when pulling a pot off the stove, don’t risk it. Use a high-quality, flame-retardant oven mitt every time you need to touch a hot pan.
Don’t Use Water to Extinguish Oil Flames
Any kitchen fire is likely going to have some form of oil or grease as an accelerant because of the nature of this room. Small spatters of oil float around the room and settle on surfaces, ready to ignite when they come into contact with fire.
As such, you cannot put out a kitchen fire with water; this will simply spread the burning oil droplets around and exacerbate the issue. Either smother the fire with a flame-retardant cloth or spray it with a fire extinguisher to keep it from spreading.
Kitchen Fire Damage Repair Process
No matter how large or small the kitchen fire is, you should always call a fire damage restoration company like PacWest Restoration. We have specialized equipment and extensive training that helps us to fully repair damage and prevent further issues down the line.
Our team can oversee the whole process for you, relying on repair techniques that are standard across the restoration industry. Here is what you can expect when you work with our qualified restoration company, which has helped thousands of your neighbors get back to normal after a fire.
Damage Assessment
Our fire restoration services start with a comprehensive assessment of the damage, looking at its extent, cause, and potential solutions. We’ll develop an action plan to restore indoor air quality and restore structural integrity to all affected aspects, then give you a rough estimate of the cost of our services. We will also help you with submitting a claim to your insurance company and keep them updated throughout the process.
Debris Removal
Fire damage remediation services include removing all damaged materials and debris, which can include personal effects, furniture, appliances, and structural elements. We will carefully document everything that has been destroyed for your insurance company so that you can get compensated for the precious items that have been lost.
Water Removal and Drying
Fire and smoke damage is not the only thing you need to worry about when it comes to a kitchen house fire: the fire department uses a huge volume of water to put out a fire, meaning that water damage restoration plays a large role in the fire damage restoration process.
We’ll perform water extraction and structural drying to suck out all of the water, then apply treatments that will prevent mold growth. In general, hard surfaces such as tile, stone, and metal can be dried out, but porous materials, like drywall, plaster, and insulation, will have to be cut out and replaced.
Smoke Removal
Where there’s fire, there’s smoke, and where there’s smoke, there’s soot damage. Far from just being unattractive and odorous, soot contains toxic chemicals that can damage your respiratory system, making soot removal a must.
Smoke remediation includes removing all visible soot and then destroying lingering odors and particulates through special treatments. We can also perform odor removal on your personal effects, such as upholstered furniture, through ozone treatments. This breaks down and releases smoke particles from deep inside the material, destroying smoke odors at their source and leaving your belongings smelling fresh.
Demolition
While demolition may make you think of simply knocking down the whole house, we use this term to mean breaking down and replacing all those home components that cannot be safely repaired. We want your home to be completely safe after a fire, so we will perform structural repairs as part of our fire damage restoration.
This involves removing all the destroyed structural elements and replacing them with safe, new material that looks as good as new. Everything from load-bearing walls, flooring, drywall, electrical components, and plumbing may be subject to repairs depending on the extent of the fire damage.
Kitchen Fire Restoration
PacWest Restoration has built our business model on helping Oregonians recover from fire damage and water damage. We’re the leading service provider for fire damage restoration throughout the greater Portland area, renowned for our excellent repairs, great communication, and considerate service. When you work with us, you benefit from our decades of experience in fire damage restoration, as well as our advanced smoke removal and mold remediation technology.
If your home has suffered from kitchen fire damage, don’t delay: call us at 503-746-6545 to get in touch with us 24/7. Protect your home’s structure and your family’s health by working with the pros in Portland fire damage remediation.
FAQs About Kitchen Fires
How Do You Calculate Fire Damage Cost?
We typically calculate the fire restoration cost by the damaged area’s square footage. This ranges significantly per square foot, based on how badly the property has been damaged and what steps we must take.
As soon as we come to develop an estimate, we’ll explain the expected cost to you and your insurance company so that everyone is on the same page. If anything changes or we run into any difficulties that necessitate more expenses, we’ll let you know right away before we move forward.
Can You Repair a House That Caught on Fire?
It is usually possible to repair a house that has caught on fire. PacWest Restoration is an expert in fire damage restoration, helping homeowners and business owners get their property back to normal after a fire. We’ll work to get your property back to normal after a fire through meticulous repairs and extensive smoke mitigation. It’s incredibly rare to come across a property that has to be entirely demolished.
How Do You Clean a House After a Small Kitchen Fire?
Fire damage cleanup for a small kitchen fire typically involves drying out all materials, scrubbing away soot, applying smoke remediation treatments, and replacing anything that has been singed or burnt. A very small fire may be cleaned up by the homeowner, but it is usually best to call restoration professionals, as we have equipment that can completely dry out materials and remove all smoke particles.
Depending on how far the smoke traveled, we may have to perform some light smoke damage repair on other areas of the home, typically those that are adjacent to the kitchen, like the dining room and living room.
Can Appliances Be Saved After a Fire?
This really depends on the extent of the damage, whether they were melted or soaked, and how well they withstand the smoke damage restoration process. It is sometimes possible to fix things like small electronics, such as tablets, phones, laptops, and external hard drives.
We understand that not only are these products expensive, but they are sentimental, too. We’ll do our best to salvage electronics after a fire, carefully balancing the need for safety with reducing the cost of replacement.
When it comes to larger appliances, it is usually not safe to use any appliances that were directly in the line of fire. As putting out a fire requires a lot of water, the appliances’ electrical components will be soaked and cannot be safely dried out. If they are burnt, they may cause more fires in the future if you try to use them again.
Fortunately, your insurance company will often recover the cost of replacing personal property like refrigerators, dishwashers, and stoves. We’ll document everything that was damaged so that you have the best chance to get replacements.
