Water Damage

If disaster where to strike tomorrow, would your business be prepared? If you have no emergency plan in place to deal with a flood disaster, your chances of reopening your business are less than 40%. A striking number for most small business owners who often have their livlihood tied directly into their businesses future. Rest assured, there are some fairly simply steps that any business owner can take to make sure that their chances of survival after a flood are high.

Imagine locking your doors and going home for the night. Now imagine waking up tomorrow and not having access to your business for 10 days. What items would you be missing? What did you not do at your business that you wish you had? It is a good idea to make a list of items that you cannot live without that you keep at the business and to have access to those items at a moments notice.

Inspect all areas of your business for specific vulnerability to water. For instance, powerstrips that plug into computers or other machines. Are they lying across the floor? How bad would flooding have to be in order to damage the electrical components of those power supplies? These are the sorts of questions your should ask yourself when performing a water vulnerability assessment at your home or business.

Be aware of items that lay atop desks, counters, and table tops as they are vulnerable to water that may flow from broken plumbing pipes, fire sprinklers, leaks from the roof/ceilings. Important documents and files that cannot be easily replaced should always be stored safely.

Another good idea is to take photos of each room/area of your business. They can be easily stored on a thumb drive or in cloud storage on most machines. Hard copies printed and stored off-site are another good option. A digital inventory of important contents will help with the insurance claims process.

Keeping computers backed up so that important information is not lost is another hugely important task.

It is also a good idea to keep a modest stock of emergency supplies on hand in case of a sudden emergency. Items like tarps, shop or wet vacuums, towels, etc provide a good amount of protection at a very moderate price.

Finally, NEVER wait in responding to the damage. Rapid response is of the utmost imporantance. Contact a licensed, insured, and experienced water damage restoration company to deploy their equipment & experience in the case of an emergency.