Convenience Store Fire – West Wickham

The Challenge

A fire can be one of the most devastating things that a person can experience. Obviously, your immediate concern will be for the safety of yourself and the other people in the area. Fire, of course, poses a very real threat to life, and the safety of everybody must be your paramount concern.

Next, it will all be about controlling and extinguishing the fire. In order to protect as many of your possessions as possible, as well as the building itself. Obviously, the fire service should be called as soon as the fire is out of hand and uncontrollable. They will be able to put the fire out and ensure that everyone is safe.

Unfortunately, that is not the end of the problems. The lasting damage the fire leaves well after it has been extinguished will need to be dealt with, or the risks to both your health and your property will not go away. Much of the soot and fire damage cleanup left behind will have carcinogenic properties, and the efforts involved with putting out the fire may cause damp and mould in the long term.

These hypothetical problems became reality for a shop owner in London recently. When their convenience shop was ravaged by fire, they knew that they needed to call in a team of experts to get the property back to a condition that they could reopen to the public. They needed a team that could work quickly, and a team that they could trust to remove all of the hidden dangers in a safe way.

They needed Ideal Response.

The Ideal Solution

When we received their call, we were ready to go onsite within 2 hours. However, we were asked to wait until some other contractors had finished their work. We were told that the cause of the fire was an electrical malfunction. Before we had arrived onsite, all the contents of the shop had been removed, and the ceiling tiles had been removed.

This posed our first major challenge of the job. The lack of ceiling tiles meant that the lighting and electrical cables were not secure, so we had to deal with this before we started dealing with the effects of the fire.

Once this was sorted, we could start with the job that we had been brought in to do – getting the property back to a safe and working order. Our highly trained team were equipped with our industry leading technology to combat the smoke and fire damage:

• HEPA Vacuums: These high-efficiency particulate air vacuums (HEPA) are powerful machines that are fitted with filters that trap invisible particles in, rather than releasing them back into the air. They are perfect for clearing up soot and ash in the aftermath of a fire
• BioSweep: This is a five-stage process that destroys surface and airborne contamination. Using microorganism radiation, plasma gas, oxidation, hydroxyl radical production and, again, HEPA filtration this fast and 100% environmentally friendly process is unrivalled at removing harmful pathogens and odours.
• Professional Cleaning Chemicals: These fast-acting cleaning and degreasing solutions can tackle even the most stubborn soiling. Between the two, they can be used on practically any surface, so we can be sure to clean every inch of the affected area.
• Soot sponges: When it comes to manual scrubbing and wiping, these are perfect for removing (you guessed it) all of the soot from the fire.

Fire Damage Clean Up Services. FREE No-Obligation Quote.

Start Your Estimate

The Result

While the convenience shop was closed, the owner wasn’t earning any money, so we made it our mission to complete all of the work as quickly as possible. We managed to remove every trace of the fire, and cleaned the entire shop to our impeccably high standards.

The clean and safe shop was now ready for the reinstallation process, before then being able to reopen to the public.