4 Steps To Emergency Preparedness For Any Disaster

12/20/2022 (Permalink)

4 Steps To Emergency Preparedness For Any Disaster

When disaster strikes, the last thing you want to do is scramble to come up with a plan. In this article, we'll show you how to create an emergency plan so that when disaster strikes, you can be prepared.

Every building needs an emergency plan in case of disaster.

Emergency preparedness plans are essential for every building, from homes to businesses. Unfortunately, many people do not have an emergency plan and find themselves scrambling in a disaster situation. If you are looking for ways to prepare yourself or your family or employees for any disaster, we have five steps you can take to ensure that everyone is safe during a crisis.

You’ve already done the first step, which was to make sure your building has a disaster plan in place. Now it's time to create an emergency plan for your facility that includes all of the different types of emergencies you may face. This will help you prepare for any situation and keep everyone on your staff safe from harm.

1. Know your risks 

Before you can prepare for an emergency, you need to know your risks. Your risk assessment should include:

• Identifying the risks to your building and occupants
• Listing the risks in order of importance (the most severe being first)
• Identifying vulnerabilities that could affect you and identifying ways to mitigate them

2. Build a team

It is important to have a team assist you in putting together an Emergency Response Plan. If you have ever tried to do anything alone, you know it can be a challenge. The same is true for emergency preparedness. No single person has the time, knowledge or skills to respond effectively to all disasters. By building a team of friends, family, or employees you can cover each others' weaknesses and strengths, making for a more effective team overall.

The best way to do this is by creating a team made up of different people who have specific skills and expertise—for example:

• First responder
• Security personnel
• Facilities manager/supervisor(s)

3. Make critical information quickly accessible

When a natural disaster or emergency strikes, communication is crucial for keeping your employees informed, safe and on board with your business recovery plan. When an event happens that impacts your business, let people know where to turn for answers. A critical part of being informed is finding out exactly what information you should be looking for and where to find it. If a company has a crisis plan, make sure that everyone knows where it is placed in the office.

4. Test the plan 

Testing your plan is essential for making sure it works. There are many ways to do this, but the most important thing is to make sure you test with real people and real equipment. You can't rely on a Google search or YouTube video to tell you if your plan will work in an emergency situation. Having regular emergency drills with your employees will give you a chance to test your plan as well as give your employees the opportunity to learn the plan first-hand. 

Now that you’ve got the basics down, it’s time to put your plan into action. Remember that this is a living document, so be sure to test it regularly and add new information as needed. Also remember that this isn’t just about making sure you have an emergency kit—it’s about being prepared for whatever comes your way!

How To Prevent Mold Growth on Bread

8/26/2022 (Permalink)

How To Keep Your Bread Fresh and Fuzz- Free

Have you ever purchased a fresh loaf of white bread at the grocery store, only to find green, fuzzy spots on the crust just a few days later? Mold can grow on various foods and in countless different environments. However, bread, with its nutritious ingredients and warm, spongy texture, is the most common breeding ground for the fuzzy fungi. If you are curious about mold growth on bread and how to handle it, read on to learn some helpful tips and tricks on keeping your bread fresh and fuzz-free!

Learn the Dangers
Eating moldy bread in Casco Bay Islands, ME, can cause numerous unfavorable reactions such as:

• Illness
• Nausea
• Vomiting
  
  

While ingesting mold is typically harmless, it can potentially cause severe illness. Therefore, if you detect fungus growth on your sourdough loaf, promptly throw it in the garbage. Further, cutting the moldy sections off the affected areas won't necessarily remove all bread mold, so keep in mind this is an ineffective mold removal method.
If you accidentally consume mold-contaminated bread, do not panic. Those with healthy and uncompromised immune systems typically don't experience any dangerous symptoms.

Handle It Properly

If you discover bread or fridge mold, do not inhale it, as fungus growth can cause a host of respiratory issues. Place the moldy bread in a sealed bag and toss it in the trash away from children and pets. Thoroughly clean the surface areas contaminated by the bread mold, and ensure it did not spread to any adjacent items. If mold ever grows out of control, call a local mold remediation specialist for professional removal.

Prevent Future Growth

The best way to prevent mold growth on your fresh bread is to place just one to two servings in a cupboard for immediate eating. Freeze the remaining loaf for easy thawing later.

While grotesque and unsightly, bread mold is a common and often benign occurrence. Make sure to handle it with care, and always follow proper food storage instructions to avoid accidental ingestion.

How SERVPRO Can Help Your Insurance Agent

7/18/2022 (Permalink)

How SERVPRO Can Help Your Insurance Agent

After a disaster at your Casco Bay Islands, ME, the business you may contact your insurance adjuster to file a claim and figure out the next steps for restoration. In many cases, your agent may have a preferred restoration vendor such as SERVPRO they recommend for a variety of reasons. In addition to being certified professionals, a preferred restoration team may also be able to help your insurance agent in a number of ways.

1. Damage Assessment

One important aspect of an insurance claim is a damage assessment. In many cases a restoration service may have to do this as well, so choosing a preferred provider allows the restoration professionals to perform the assessment they need to create a repair plan, and then share this information with your insurance provider.

2. Electronic Inventory System

Your insurance adjuster may also recommend a local SERVPRO as they offer the use of an electronic inventory system. This system can be accessed remotely and can store files needed for the insurance claim. This can allow all the information to be kept in a single location making it easy for your agent to access what they need as they work on your claim.

3. Item Cleaning Services

Another service your professional restoration team may be able to offer is item cleaning. This means that they can possibly clean and restore many of the company items that may have been damaged. Each item will require a different cleaning solution depending on size, material, and if the item is mechanical or electrical in nature.

A restoration service may even be able to repair documentation. This can be helpful to your agent because it allows them to recommend a single team to work with rather than several.

Your insurance adjuster may recommend a preferred restoration service such as SERVPRO for a number of reasons. These can include the team’s ability to help with damage assessment, as well as their ability to offer an electronic inventory service and item cleaning. If you have further questions a professional can help.

What Happens When Lighting Strikes a House?

7/9/2022 (Permalink)

What Happens When a House is Hit by Lightning?

Approximately 22,600 house fires are started by lightning every year. In some areas of the United States, these bolts can strike the ground well over 100 times per second, and meteorologists have recorded over 900 strikes per minute. Although not all of these will cause a lightning fire, some of them can and do.

The Three Types of Damage

Fire is not the only thing that you have to worry about when volatile electricity strikes your home. There are three ways that it can cause both physical and fire damage.

• Fired damage - caused by a direct strike to wood or other flammable substance
• Electrical shorts - caused by electricity traveling through your wiring
• Shock wave damage - damage caused by the wave of energy released during a strike

These three types are all dangerous and can be the cause of a lightning fire.

Strikes Are Preventable
Fortunately, there are a few things that you can do to prevent direct strikes. The easiest is to trim tall trees around your home. Lightning looks for the quickest and easiest path downward. This means the taller the object, the more likely it is to be hit.
You should also make sure that your roof and shingles are in good repair. Use either asphalt shingles or another nonconductive material as roofing. This may not prevent a strike but will help insulate your home from fire damage.

After a Stike to Your Home
If your home takes a direct strike, you may have scorch marks on the walls even if it did not start a house fire. This is because lightning travels through conductive materials like wiring and coax cable. To clean these scorch marks, you will need a professional in Gorham, ME.

Fortunately, a strike does not always result in a lightning fire. By taking some simple precautions, you can lessen the chances that your home will be a victim of this type of fire.

SERVPRO Offers Expert Document Restoration Services

2/8/2022 (Permalink)

SERVPRO is available 24/7, 365 days a year to help with any size fire or water loss. Even if you just have a question, call us and we will answer you!

SERVPRO's Document Restoration Services Are Second To None.

A significant water, sewer or flood event can damage all your essential documents and files. If recovery is going to happen, it needs to start right away. SERVPRO understands this and operates a secure document restoration facility. Professionals there control the process and give your documents the treatment they deserve.

Different Types of Documents Require Different Responses

Not all documents have the same level of importance. Not all records are paper. Not every document needs restoration. Each document gets an appropriate level of treatment. The specific treatment depends on the document’s type and importance. Here are some examples of the types and the treatments they might receive:

1. Important documents need restoration. An important document has an original signature, hand-written notes or an official mark. If a copy won’t do, it’s important. A special freeze-drying process performs document drying. Gamma irradiation sterilizes these documents when bacteria and other contaminants are a concern. Examples of important documents would be:

• Mortgages
• Wills
• Stock, bond and other certificates
• Blueprints
• Maps
• Books and manuscripts
• Irreplaceable legal documents

2. You can digitize less critical documents. In most situation, it’s not the document that is important. It is the information on the document. In these cases, it is more cost-effective to digitize and reprint the document. An alternative is to digitize and reproduce it when needed.

3. Some documents are not paper-based. Developed films and x-rays may seem undamaged but still, require cleaning. The same applies to microfiche and microfilm. Photographic prints may pose a challenge to the document restoration specialists.

4. Medical records require special treatment. SERVPRO’s HIPAA Master-Certified technicians perform this cleaning. Round-the-clock surveillance of the restoration activity ensures confidentiality.
Perhaps a flooded basement destroyed your home office in the Windham, ME, area. Maybe a roof failure at work soaked the company accounting records. The amount of damage doesn’t matter. The document restoration experts at SERVPRO tackle projects of any size.

How To Choose an Air Purifier

1/10/2022 (Permalink)

What To Look For When Buying An Air Purifier

Of all the places you spend your time, your home in West Falmouth, ME, should be the place you can breathe the easiest. An effective air filtration system can help. The market is so saturated with purifiers that look promising, however, that it can be overwhelming to try to choose the one that’s best for you and your family. The following suggestions may be able to help you narrow down the options.

Qualities To Seek

The first thing you must decide is what you need. When experts test to see if an air purifier works well, they often look at four criteria:

• Percentage of particles removed from air
• Amount of air flow
• Simplicity of use
• Level of customer satisfaction

You may choose your air filtration device based on one or all of these standards. If you want a purifier that reduces the amount of potentially irritating particles in the air, for example, filter efficiency is probably going to be your most important requirement.

Reasons To Buy

If you want to reduce the number of airborne particles, such as mold spores or dust, in your home, mold remediation experts recommend a purifier with a HEPA filter. HEPA filters not only remove over 99% of particles from the air, they actually improve in performance over time. If your machine also has a carbon pre-filter, you can increase the life of your filter and improve your air quality even further. The most effective air purifiers on the market include the Oransi Max, the BlueAir 450E and the OV200 Air Purifier. While costs for these machines can range from a few hundred dollars to over $1000, it may be worth the price to know that your family is breathing cleaner air.

The best air filtration system is one that has an efficient filter, good air flow, ease of use and good customer reviews. Look for the purifier that improves the air quality of your home the best.