After the disaster
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 6 months, 2 weeks AGO
Joel Martin has been with the Columbia Basin Herald for more than 25 years in a variety of roles and is the most-tenured employee in the building. Martin is a married father of eight and enjoys spending time with his children and his wife, Christina. He is passionate about the paper’s mission of informing the people of the Columbia Basin because he knows it is important to record the history of the communities the publication serves. | April 3, 2026 1:05 AM
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.ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
Endless battle
Noxious Weed Control Board works to keep invasive plants under control
MOSES LAKE — Some of the nastiest plants in Grant County were the topic of a class led by Jay Johnson, a consultant with the Grant County Noxious Weed Control Board, Tuesday. The Noxious Weed Control Board, as its name would suggest, is tasked with keeping weeds under control in Grant County. That’s not a small job; the board’s website lists 129 species of noxious weeds that are found around Grant County. A noxious weed is defined as an invasive, non-native plant that threatens agricultural crops, local ecosystems or fish and wildlife habitat, according to the Noxious Weed Control Board. Washington state law requires that these weeds be identified and their spread kept to a minimum, if not completely eradicated. “We’re one of those agencies a lot of people don’t really understand,” Johnson said. “We’re a county office and … our funding is tax-based assessment. When you get your tax bill and you look down at all the expenses that you pay for, there we are.”
BASIN EVENTS: Oct. 16-24
COLUMBIA BASIN — Whether you feel like shopping, crafting, learning or seeing a show, there’s something happening for you this week in the Basin. Oct. 16 ‘My Family (Mi Familia)’ screening Spanning three generations, “My Family (Mi Familia)” is a heartfelt drama that follows the Sánchez family as they build their lives in East Los Angeles. Through love, hardship, triumph, and sacrifice, the film explores the immigrant experience, the strength of family bonds, and the traditions that connect one generation to the next. Lowrider show and taco truck before the screening. Sponsored by Columbia Basin Allied Arts, EDUBS C/S and the Moses Lake Creative District. $12 per person. Doors open at 6 p.m., film begins at 7 p.m. at the Moses Lake Civic Center Auditorium, 401 S. Balsam St. Tickets and info: www.cba-arts.org.
Moses Lake author encourages women to look beyond church culture norms
MOSES LAKE — A Moses Lake author’s book, “A Christian Woman Striving to Live Her Faith in a Man-Controlled World,” takes aim at the role to which many churches relegate the female half of their congregations. “It’s to encourage women in the faith,” Linda Curran said. “A lot of churches say, ‘Teach Sunday school, do this, do that, but don’t (evangelize.)’" In her book, Curran recounts a time when she moved to a new community and joined a church there. She was surprised to learn that, as a new female member, she had been automatically assigned church cleaning duties. When she questioned it, she wrote, she was met with condescension and her objections were brushed aside. In other churches, she said, women who were capable of teaching were relegated to “women’s ministry.”