We received a call on late Friday afternoon, can we support in a recent Fire claim in Berkshire. We arrived onsite just before 8am, although we had the house number and street address, it was clear when you drove in the street what property was effected.

 

We parked up and waited for the customer. All of our vehicles are not sign written, they are blank, this is on purpose, because of social media, neighbours and even passers by like to be lets say a little bit of “I wonder what’s going on in there” so if our vans are bland then no one needs to know. Its not always obvious what is going on inside a property.

 

Customer arrived and was very distraught, I advised them best not to come into the property due to the thick residue of carbon from the smoke and fire. However they insisted. We donned our PPE and gave the customers face coverings and gloves to put on.

 

As we opened the door you were met with blackened ceilings, walls and floors. The customer spent less than 30 seconds inside and had to leave.As always we ask the customer “what matters most to them”. In this case it was the sentimental ceramics there were on a display cabinet in the lounge. However when we entered the lounge and found what can only be descried as the remnants of a bonfire.

 

The first stage of any fire is to try to remove the source of the incident, over the following days we packed what we could and taken into storage facility for restoration and cleared the property of all debris and contents. This will allow the surveyors to see the structure of the building and put a scope of works together. Meanwhile we could concentrate on the contents that we removed for restoration.
 
The team worked tirelessly on this contents that we removed from the property, many sentimental items, crockery and ornaments passed down through generations, family photos and a wedding dress. All of the customers jewellery, including watches, rings and necklaces were successfully restored!
 
In the end, we managed to restore over 540 items, including the items the customer held closest to their hearts.
 
We will hold all the items in our secure facility until the property is ready to receive them back.