Fire & Smoke Damage Restoration
Most fire losses involve three separate problems: what burned, what the smoke touched, and the water used to put it out. Smoke and soot travel far beyond the fire room and start corroding metal and etching finishes within days, while suppression water needs the same drying response as any other loss — which is why fire jobs move fast in the first week and then settle into a rebuild.
Common causes we see
- Kitchen fires from unattended cooking, the most common residential cause
- Electrical faults in aging wiring, panels and overloaded circuits
- Heating equipment, chimneys and space heaters
- Candles, smoking materials and improperly stored flammables
Signs you need Fire Damage Restoration now
- Visible char, soot deposits or heat-blistered finishes
- A smoke odour that intensifies with heat or humidity
- Yellow or brown staining on walls and ceilings away from the fire
- Standing water and saturated materials from suppression
Situations we handle every week
- A kitchen fire was put out quickly but the whole house smells
- The fire department left and the property is open, wet and unsecured
- Contents survived the fire but are covered in soot
What happens if it is left alone
- Acidic soot etches glass, tile and porcelain permanently within days of the fire
- Metal fixtures, electronics and wiring corrode rapidly under soot residue
- Smoke odour bonds into porous materials and becomes progressively harder to remove
- Suppression water left standing produces mold on top of the fire damage
How we handle fire damage restoration
- 1Secure and stabiliseBoard-up, tarping and shoring make the structure safe and weather-tight, and utilities are checked before any crew works inside.
- 2Address suppression water immediatelyExtraction and drying start straight away. Fire losses that sit wet for a week arrive at the rebuild with a mold problem attached.
- 3Soot and residue removal by typeDry, wet, protein and fuel-oil residues each need a different method. Using the wrong one drives soot into the surface and sets the stain.
- 4Contents pack-out and cleaningSalvageable contents are inventoried, packed out and cleaned off-site — including ultrasonic cleaning for hard goods and ozone or hydroxyl treatment for textiles.
- 5Odour neutralisation and rebuildOdour is treated at source with thermal fogging, hydroxyl generators and sealing, then licensed crews rebuild the structure and finishes.
What's included
- Emergency board-up, tarping and structural shoring
- Suppression water extraction and structural drying
- Soot removal matched to residue type
- Corrosion control on metals and electronics
- Contents inventory, pack-out and specialty cleaning
- Thermal fogging, hydroxyl odour treatment and full reconstruction
How this differs from similar services
Fire Damage Restoration vs Emergency Board-Up
Board-up is the immediate securing step and can be ordered alone. This page covers the full fire loss from securing through rebuild.
Fire Damage Restoration vs Property Restoration
Reconstruction after a fire is the same trade work as any large rebuild — that page covers the rebuild scope in its own right.
Read before you decide
Fire Damage Restoration — frequently asked
Smoke follows air pressure and HVAC pathways, so it travels through the entire building and deposits residue in rooms that never saw flame. Odour treatment is nearly always whole-property rather than room-specific.
Related services
Emergency Board-Up
Board-up is the fastest, cheapest thing you can do to stop a bad loss becoming a worse one. An open building takes on weather, invites entry and keeps accumulating damage every hour it stays open — and carriers expect you to secure it. Crews carry materials on the truck and secure openings the same visit, often within hours of the call.
Property Restoration
Restoration is the rebuild phase: everything that has to be replaced after mitigation is finished. It is ordinary construction work under unusual conditions — an insurance scope, a displaced household and a schedule everyone wants shortened. Keeping mitigation and reconstruction under one contract means nobody argues about where drying ended and rebuilding began.
Structural Drying
Structural drying is the science half of restoration: removing bound moisture from framing, subfloor, plaster and concrete after the free water is gone. It is not a matter of putting fans in a room — equipment counts are calculated from cubic volume, class of loss and material type, then adjusted daily against psychrometric readings until the building matches its own unaffected baseline.
Storm Damage Restoration
Storm losses combine an envelope failure with water intrusion, and they arrive in volume — which means the first company on site is usually the one that gets the building secured before the next band of weather. We stabilise first, document the storm cause properly, then handle drying and rebuild as one continuous scope.