MOSES LAKE — When a disaster strikes your home, the worst part may be the aftermath. Restoring a damaged home is a job for professionals. 

“We have water jobs, fire jobs, mold jobs, cleaning jobs in general,” said Issiah Gonzalez, project manager for ServiceMaster by Francisco in Moses Lake. 

About 70% of ServiceMaster’s work comes through homeowner’s insurance, Gonzalez said, with the homeowners themselves paying for the other 30%. It’s a good idea to let the restoration service deal directly with the insurance company, Gonzalez said. 

“For the most part, insurances go off of what we say in the sense of this has to come out, this has to come out, this was damaged from the water and/or fire, stuff like that,” he said. “Insurances have their own lingo, and a lot of times customers don't know what that language is. We take that on and try to explain it … We want to make sure we do everything we need to, to get make sure that the insurance is going to be on the same page.” 

Fire damage is fairly cut-and-dried, Gonzalez said. The first thing to do is take out the damaged material. When it comes to reducing the smoke smell, tri-sodium phosphate is the homeowner’s friend, according to the Red Cross, depending on the extent of the damage. Washing fabric in the washing machine with 4-6 tablespoons of tri-sodium phosphate and a cup of household cleaner or bleach can do the trick. On walls, furniture and floors, mix the same amount of tri-sodium phosphate and cleaner or bleach with a gallon of warm water and wash down the surfaces. Be sure to wear rubber gloves and rinse down the surface with warm water after cleaning. 

For big fires that do serious damage, ServiceMaster has an ozone machine that neutralizes the smell on a molecular level, Gonzalez said. If all else fails, he added, they can simply seal over the smelly surface and keep it from being detectable. 

Water damage is more common, said Service Master Business and Development Director Kendyl Crum, and more pernicious.  

“With fire, once the damage is done, it's done,” Crum said. “Water is like the lurking person you don't want around and you sometimes don't know they're there … One in 60 homes, on average, will experience a water loss, whereas one in 385 will experience a fire loss.” 

About 75-80% of ServiceMaster’s work is water-related, Gonzalez said. 

“It doesn’t take a lot of water,” Gonzalez said. “If water continuously gets on one area, like if it runs across where the bathtub meets the wall, water can eventually penetrate. It may not be a week or two, it may be four months down the line, and you don’t even think about it, but damages start showing up. A lot of people don’t think too much about that because (they think) it’s a one-off thing. But it’s a one-off thing that happens multiple times.” 

Homeowners often think they can repair water damage themselves, Crum said, and it’s usually a huge mistake. 

“A lot of times with water they’re shooting themselves in the foot because it’s still leaking or they didn’t get everything, and that’s when the mold grows,” she said. 

Mold is nasty stuff, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. It produces allergens, irritants and in some cases mycotoxins, which can be deadly even in low concentrations. A homeowner shouldn’t try to clean up any moldy area that’s more than about 10 square feet, the EPA wrote on its website.  

“Water (damage) in general is a lot worse than a lot of people actually think it is, because water can get in places that you don't even think about looking,” Gonzalez said. “We use these special water meters that tell us whether something is wet or not. When customers say that (something) is dry and they dealt with it, when we go out there (we find) a lot of times that they're wrong or they are overlooking something … There's still trapped water, and they're thinking that it's dry when it's really not.  Then insurance has come in, and they may not cover it because (the owner) didn't really take that much action. They just let it sit, when in reality, they should have called us to come out and inspect, to make sure that it's all been taken care of.” 

    Mold in the home can cause health problems and possibly even be deadly.