Arizona’s monsoon season has changed a whole lot over the last 30 years. This season, which stretches from the middle of June through the end of September, hasn’t provided the state with as much precipitation as it used to in recent years.
But even still, it’s very important for those who live in Arizona and, more specifically the Gilbert area, to know what to do in the event of a monsoon that causes flooding. It’s important to perform flood damage cleanup ASAP if your home is ever filled with water during a monsoon or for any other reason.
Do you know what to do after a flood in your house? If not, you should learn about what to do both when flooding is taking place and after a flood has occurred. It’ll make dealing with the flood cleanup process so much easier for you.
Continue reading to find out how to respond to flooding in your home.
Emergency Tips for Dealing With Flooding in Your Home
Monsoons tend to strike fast and don’t always give homeowners much time to plan for them accordingly. Other issues like burst plumbing pipes will also happen at a moment’s notice and give you next to no time to react.
If you ever find that your home is flooding due to a monsoon, a burst plumbing pipe, or another problem, you should spring into action right away to make sure you and your fellow family members are able to stay safe.
Here are emergency tips for dealing with flooding in your home while it’s still going on:
- Move to a higher floor in your home to avoid coming into contact with floodwater
- Steer clear of getting into your car and driving around during a monsoon or a similar weather event
- Start creating a water removal plan if you suspect floodwater is going to be able to enter your home
- Begin documenting any valuables damaged during flooding for insurance purposes
You can worry about doing flood damage cleanup later. Your initial goal should be to keep yourself and your family safe while also keeping one eye on the work that will need to be done following flooding in your house.
Steps to Take During the Flood Damage Cleanup Process
After a monsoon is over or a burst plumbing pipe has stopped sending water all over the place within your home, you will need to make flood damage cleanup your top priority. You shouldn’t allow water to linger in your home for any longer than it has to.
There are a series of steps you should take immediately once it’s safe to do so. Here are the seven steps you’ll need to take to get the water damage cleanup process underway.
1. Assess the Situation
Do you officially have a flood-damaged basement on your hands? Or were you able to avoid having too much water damage done to your home during a monsoon, plumbing emergency, etc.?
Before you do anything else, you should assess the situation in your home to see how bad things are. You shouldn’t start cleaning storm damage until you know what you’re going to be dealing with.
2. Turn Off the Gas and Electricity
Once you know how much water damage was done to your home, you can begin trying to clean things up. But prior to doing this, you will need to turn off both the gas and the electricity in your home.
You might be able to do this yourself as long as it isn’t too wet in your home at the moment. But if your basement is completely flooded or if your home’s electrical panel sustained damage during a flood, you will want to call on an electrician for help.
Either way, you’ll need to have your gas and electricity turned off so that they don’t cause any complications during storm damage repair. And with non-stop air conditioning going on during the hotter months, you may experience drain pan overflows and condensation lines leaking. Always take precaution!
3. Start Pumping Out Water
Removing water from your basement and any other areas of your home will be of the utmost importance. The longer that it sits in your house, the more damage it’s going to be able to do.
Make it your mission to use a wet-dry vacuum, a sump pump, and/or an electric water transfer pump to get all the water that’s in your home out. Just make sure you don’t pump too much water out of your house at once.
If you have several feet of water in your basement, FEMA suggests pumping out about one foot of water every 24 hours. It’ll prevent you from saturating the ground that surrounds your home and potentially doing damage to your home’s foundation.
4. Dry Your House
After you’ve removed as much water from your home as you can, open up all your windows and doors. Commercial-grade humidifiers can remove the excess humidity to slow down the clock before mold begins to grow. However, this part of the flood cleanup process might take some time to play out.
You’ll need to be patient while waiting for your house to dry. It might take a couple of days for your home’s walls, floors, etc. to get as dry as you can get them.
5. Throw Out Unsalvageable Items
You should be able to salvage some of the things that got wet during the flooding in your home. But there will also be some things that you’ll definitely want to throw away.
Upholstered furniture, mattresses, stuffed animals, and books are just some of the items that won’t usually be worth saving following a flood in a home. Even if you’re able to dry them, they won’t ever be the same again.
6. Clean Your Flooring
The floors in your home will bear the brunt of the flood damage done to it. You might have to rip up certain types of flooring, like carpeting, and throw them out.
But you might also be able to save some other kinds of flooring like tile floors and hardwood floors. It’ll just be important for you to get to work on cleaning them as soon as you can so that you’re able to bring them back to life.
7. Call a Water Damage Cleanup Company
If you find yourself overwhelmed by the flood damage cleanup process at any point, you should call on the experts for help. A water damage cleanup company like Emergency Flood Team is one of the best companies that clean up after floods.
Contact us to get flood damage cleanup done faster and more effectively in your home. We’ll walk you through the water damage cleanup process, work directly with your insurance and make sure everything goes according to plan.
Eliminating the Risk of Mold Following Flooding
If you let water sit in your home for any longer than you have to following a monsoon, a burst plumbing pipe, or another issue, it’s going to do more than just damage your flooring, walls, etc. It’s also going to increase the chances of mold growing both in the part of your home affected by flooding as well as in other areas inside it.
Being exposed to mold can be very harmful to your health. It can lead to everything from a stuffy nose and wheezing to major respiratory issues.
Mold can also do extensive damage to your home if it’s allowed to grow and eventually spread. You might be forced to do more water damage cleanup than you would have to otherwise if you give mold an opportunity to spread throughout your house.
With all this in mind, it would be well worth investing in mold remediation services to help you put your mold problems in the past.
The Importance of Timely Flood Restoration
Some homeowners are in such shock following flooding in their homes that they drag their feet when it’s time to do flood damage cleanup. This can really come back to bite them in the end.
Timely flood restoration is important because it’ll ensure you and your family aren’t put in harm’s way by floodwater. It’ll also limit the amount of damage that floodwater is able to do to your home.
Additionally, doing flood restoration fast will enable you to start the process of filing a homeowners insurance claim so that you can get your insurance company to help you pay for cleaning storm damage. For each of these reasons, you shouldn’t hesitate one bit when it’s time to do flood damage cleanup.
The quicker you’re able to begin the cleanup process, the quicker you’ll be able to get things back to normal within your home.
Contact Us for Flood Damage Cleanup Services
You should know that you don’t ever have to deal with flood damage cleanup on your own. Emergency Flood Team can set you up with the services you’ll need to restore order in your house.
When you’re trying to figure out what to do after a flood in your house, you should give us a call. We’ll walk you through the water damage cleanup process and make sure everything goes according to plan.
Touch base with us today for all your water mitigation needs in Gilbert, AZ as well as other areas in the East Valley and Yavapai County.
