You can hire someone to assist you in cleaning up your home after a fire has damaged the inside or you can do the majority of the cleanup yourself, depending on whether you are physically able or not. You can save a lot of money by doing most of the work yourself, but if there is anything that you are unsure of your ability to do, let the professionals handle it.
Do not enter the house without turning the electricity off, especially if there is standing water from the fire truck left. You need to record any damage that occurred to the home with a video or still camera. This will help you when you need to file a claim with your insurance company in the very near future.
Locate the important papers in your home, such as birth certificates, marriage certificates, insurance papers, and etcetera. If you did not have a fireproof and waterproof safe to store these in, you should purchase one as soon as you can. The odds of a house fire happening to the same person twice may not seem that great, but it does happen. Learn from the past and protect your valuables.
Do not walk on carpets that have ash and soot on them. Use a vacuum cleaner (not an upright) to clean this up, since an upright has bristles that will only drive the ash further into the fibers of it.
Anything damaged by the fire or the water sprayed into the house by the fire truck should be removed and taken outside. Wet items of furniture should be taken outside and let to dry out as soon as possible.
Items with a heavy amount of padding that have been soaked with water must be dried out as soon as possible or they will mold within a few days. This is different than in a situation where a sofa or chair is flooded by water from a river or the ocean due to a hurricane or other storm, since those waters contain mud, silt, bacteria, and etcetera. There is not much danger of a large amount of bacteria being in the water from the truck, so you are more able to save your furniture.
Unfortunately, the smoke damage to your ceiling and walls will have to be painted over. Most of the time, attempts to wash this off the walls only succeed in spreading the soot around.
Putting a laptop and a soft drink onto the same surface is almost taboo to most people who own a laptop computer, even though most people who are at their computers or laptops for several hours a day will tell you that it is quite difficult to put in a full day's work at the computer and not eat and drink almost at the same time.
I keep a drink near me at all times and fortunately I have never spilled anything onto my beloved laptop, but there are many incidents where others have. Those who have only just purchased their first laptop will probably not know how to deal with water (or liquid) damage like this. There is a way to handle this situation and possibly save your machine, however.
Most water damage that is done to your laptop is usually caused by acidic beverages like soda or coffee, because they leave a sticky residue on anything they are spilled on. They also tend to cause corrosion on any metal contacts that they might touch on the motherboard, hard drive, and etcetera.
If you do spill something on your laptop, remove the power source as quickly as possible. This includes the A/C adapter and the battery, as well, because it is not the liquid alone that causes the problem. If a laptop or other electronic device has no electricity running through it when the liquid is spilled, it will likely be fine if you dry it out as soon as possible.
However, an electric current running through a wet device is what causes the circuits to essentially fry and all software programming to be removed. Let a device such as a CD player that has become submerged in water dry out completely before you attempt to power it on. Remove the batteries until you are sure. This same principle can be applied to a wet laptop.
If you have merely spilled water onto it, then you might not have a big problem on your hands as long as you removed the electrical current from the device before the water sank deep into the device. If you have spilled soda or coffee into the device, then it will leave a sticky residue on the inside of your laptop.
After removing the electrical current, turn it over and allow the excess liquid to drain out. After you to this, wipe the outside with a cloth of some kind.
After this, you can take the machine to a professional repairman to make sure the inside is undamaged or if you have only spilled water into it, you can wait until it is completely dry. If you are absolutely sure that the inside components were not damaged by the electric current, turn it back on after you are sure the inside is dry.
Jim Corkern has sinced written about articles on various topics from Home, Health and Guide Guitar. Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality companies and. Jim Corkern's top article generates over 823000 views. to your Favourites.