Tips for Addressing Flooding in Your Building

4/15/2021 (Permalink)

Water damage can wreak havoc on your commercial building. Knowing what to do before, during and after a storm ensures that your business is interrupted as little as possible. When your office or warehouse in Clearfield, UT, floods, there are several things you need to do to get your building back to normal.

3 Tips for Addressing Flooding in Your Building

1. Prepare for the Storm

The best defense is solid prevention. You may not be able to prevent all the damage that a heavy storm can bring, but you can minimize the amount of contaminated water that gets into your building. Black water carries brings a lot of things with it:

• Bacteria
  
• Dirt
  
• Debris
  
• Chemicals
  

To prevent as much damage as possible, use sandbags or other types of barriers, particularly around doors or other entry points to block floodwater from getting into your building. Incorporate trenches into your landscaping plan that are designed to direct excess water away from your building. Have the whole building from the roof to the foundation inspected regularly to identify trouble spots.

2. Avoid Flooded Spaces

When the building starts to flood, it's natural to want to do whatever you can to prevent as much water damage as possible. Charging directly into standing water is a bad idea, though. You don't know what is in contaminated floodwater. No one should enter it until he or she dons the appropriate protective gear and is taking every possible precaution.

3. Hire a Mitigation Team

Once the storm passes, the first call you make should be to certified flood mitigation experts. The team can arrive within hours of your call and assess what needs to be done. Technicians remove water, repair damage and test your building before and after mitigation to make sure that it has been thoroughly decontaminated.

Storm season can be unpredictable. You may not be able to prevent all the water damage to your building during a storm, but knowing the appropriate next step to take is crucial to efficient mitigation.