Hurricane and Storm Water Damage Cleanup in Fort Lauderdale, FL

A named storm usually brings water into a building in more than one way at the same time. Wind-driven rain gets past roof tiles, flashing, windows and sliding doors. Heavy rain that cannot drain pushes water under doors and through garage thresholds. Where canals and the Intracoastal run high, surge and king-tide water can come over a seawall and into a yard or ground floor.

The power often fails at the same moment, so the air conditioning stops and the building warms and humidifies while everything is wet. That is why storm losses turn from a drying job into a mold job quickly, and why the first day matters.

Rain that came through a roof or window is not the same as water that came in from the ground. Water that enters from outside the building, whether from a flooded street, a canal or a lake, is treated as contaminated (IICRC Category 3) under the S500 standard. That means extraction, removal of the porous materials it reached such as baseboard, carpet pad and drywall up to a cut line above the wet line, cleaning and antimicrobial treatment, and measured drying.

In a house that took both, we map and log each wet area by water category, because rainwater and outside floodwater are handled differently.

In Broward's heat and humidity, wet drywall and baseboards can start supporting mold growth within a few days, and a building with the air conditioning off warms up fast. Drying that starts early lowers the chance that mold growth takes hold. Where growth is already established, we remediate under the IICRC S520 standard with containment and controlled removal.