Emergency

• Fire & smoke
• Water
• Biohazard
• Mold

Start here #Link to this section

The first hour — the ordered checklist. If you read one page, read that one.

By event #Link to this section

Each of these produces more than one kind of damage. The order below is what actually happens.

• After a house fire — fire, smoke, suppression water, then mold

Naming what you have #Link to this section

Guidance that does not name these is not specific enough to act on, which is why every page here does.

• Water is graded by category. Category 1 is clean supply water. Category 2 is significantly contaminated. Category 3 is grossly contaminated — sewage, rising external water. The category decides what gets dried and what gets removed, and it degrades with time.
• Smoke is graded by residue type. Dry smoke, wet smoke, protein residue and fuel-oil soot behave differently and depend on what burned, not on how big the fire was.
• Coverage turns on the peril, and for water, on whether it came from inside the building or outside it.

Sewage and biohazard get the strongest treatment #Link to this section

Category 3 water and biohazard are health hazards, not mopping jobs. Porous materials they contact generally cannot be salvaged by drying or cleaning — they are removed. That is a demolition scope, not a drying scope, and it is the single largest cost difference in a water loss.

See water categories and biohazard.