Have You Ever Burned A Turkey?

Smoke Damage and Its Health Effects

How often has this happened to you? You’re enjoying a good time with your family on Thanksgiving. Maybe you build a puzzle, or perhaps you’re watching a football game. You might just be floating around enjoying different conversations. You smell something, a burning smell. It’s the turkey! You rush to the oven and open it up and clouds of smoke billow out! You burned the turkey!

House Fire Season

House fires increase dramatically during the winter because we spend more time indoors and do more to heat our homes. While most fires are easily preventable, accidents still happen. When you think of house fires, you think of the damage done by the flames. Grease fires are especially common, since we do more cooking inside during the winter.

Grease fires can cause a lot of damage if you don’t know how to handle them. The instinct with fire is to try and douse it with water, but this only makes the fire spread. If you do this in a panic, you could be looking at serious injury and more damage to your home. Instead, you have to stay calm and follow steps we’ve shared in the past.

This is definitely pretty serious, but often the kind of damage is easy to repair, especially if you get the fire under control quickly. There’s another problem of fires that’s more troublesome.

Smoke Damage

Smoke damage is much more of a pain. It can spread to any area of the house, so it won’t do damage just to the room where the fire happens. It also leaves behind residue with a horrible smell that lingers for a long time. Since it can get anywhere, it might be in places you can’t see, or wouldn’t expect, like inside walls or under cupboards. You can spend weeks trying to clean it up and never find the source.

With holidays (and big holiday feasts) coming up, this damage can be even worse. When you burn meat, the smoke leaves behind an especially nasty residue that is hard to clean and stinks worse than regular smoke. This residue can’t be cleaned by normal house cleaners because of its unique composition. You need special cleaners and cleaning techniques to get rid of it.

Health Concerns

The bad smell of smoke damage isn’t the only problem. That bad smell happens because the air is full of chemicals coming from the residue. This can have many adverse affects on your health and quality of life. These effects include allergic reactions, respiratory issues, skin and eye irritation, just to name a few. These problems will linger as long as the smoke damage remains. The problem is even worse if you have underlying health conditions, such as asthma or emphysema.

Smoke Damage May Be Covered By Your House Insurance

The good news is that smoke damage is usually covered by your standard home insurance policies. If you’ve got a good insurance package, you shouldn’t have to worry about the cost too much. You should make sure that the people you contract to fix the damage know about how to clean smoke damage, however; there are some restoration companies out there that don’t. They’ll fix all the visible damage, but miss the smoke damage, leaving you with a house that smells like a campfire.

Alpine’s No Smoke Smell Guarantee

Here at Alpine, we’ve got a lot of experience with fire damage restoration. That includes cleaning up smoke damage. We’ve got the right cleaners and the right tools. We promise that after we clean up the mess from the fire, you won’t smell the lingering smoke smell. That means you won’t have to worry about the other problems smoke causes either.

Check Your Insurance

Your insurance is very important. We work with your insurance agency to make sure you get the most from your coverage, but the coverage has to be there in the first place. Lately, we’ve seen a lot of customers find out that their insurance coverage isn’t as good as they thought. Thanks to rising costs in materials due to shortages and the general housing bubble, a lot of houses are costing more to repair than they’re covered for. Make sure that you check with your insurance company soon and find out how good your coverage is. You don’t want to be left footing the bill on your repairs.

Give Us A Call

As always, we hope you don’t need us to clean up your house after a fire, but the possibility is always there. Don’t trust your restoration job to just anyone; come to us first. We’ll make sure to get everything, not just the visible damage. When it’s over, there won’t be any sign of the fire left to remind you of it. We’re here whenever you need us, so don’t hesitate to get in touch.