1. Secure your water heater: You can do this by strapping the tank to a wall stud and bolting the bottom of the container to the floor.
2. Fasten book shelves to the wall: Heavy falling objects are a hazard to your family’s safety. You can prevent shelving systems from toppling by bolting them in a few places to wall studs.
3. Be conscious of how you store loose items: Placing heavy boxes on the tops of shelves is a dangerous practice, earthquake or no earthquake. Always put heavy items stored on shelves or in closets at the lowest possible level.
4. Know where your utility shut-offs are: The greatest safety hazard is not usually the quake itself– it’s what happens afterwards. To prevent fires or flooding, know where the main shut-offs are located for gas, electricity and water.
5. Keep home systems in good repair: Faulty electrical wiring or leaky connections in your gas line can cause a lot of trouble following a temblor. If you’ve been putting off these repairs, now is the time to take care of them once and for all.
6. Shore up your home’s foundation: A certain amount of settling is natural within a few years after a new home’s construction. However, if your foundation has deep cracks it may aggravate damage done to your structure during a quake. If you have concerns, bring in a professional to do an assessment.
7. Check your homeowners’ policy: Most standard insurance policies do not cover earthquake damage; such coverage must be purchased separately. Make sure you have all you bases covered BEFORE disaster strikes.

For more detailed information about earthquake damage prevention, visit the FEMA website or contact your Utah disaster cleanup specialists at UDK.

The answer inevitably becomes: “it depends.” Whether or not your homeowners’ policy will cover your particular damage depends both on your individual policy as well as the circumstances surrounding the disaster. The two most confusing cleanup jobs in terms of whether or not there will be coverage are water damage and mold.  Here is a brief primer of homeowners’ policies vis-à-vis disaster coverage.

Water Damage

Most insurance will cover water damage caused by storms, broken water pipes, fixtures, and appliances. Damage to the structure itself will be covered, along with damage to contents that comes as a direct result of the disaster. Insurance will only cover losses due to rain, however: if a river floods as a result of the same storm, the structure and contents will not be covered; which brings us to the topic of flood damage.

Water damage that comes as a result of flooding from a stream, lake, river or ocean is NOT covered under homeowners’ policies. Even mud flow damage will fall under this category. You must purchase insurance separately through FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program in order for these kinds of losses to be covered.

Mold

Most policies will definitely cover mold remediation, cleanup, and restoration efforts if the fungus is present as a DIRECT RESULT of a covered event such as a non-flood water-related disaster. If the mold is present due to owner neglect or growth has occurred over a long period of time, then cleanup is usually NOT covered. This is why it is so essential to have your home professionally inspected for mold anytime you suspect it may be present.

Bottom Line: Check Your Policy

The above scenarios are meant to be a general guideline only: for specifics about what your policy does and does not cover, be sure to check with your insurance agent.

What Kids Are Feeling

Children need to feel secure and when they see destruction happen in the place where they feel safest, it’s bound to have an effect. This is usually manifested in one or more of the following ways: extreme sadness, fear of what the future may hold, or acting in inappropriate ways. Understand that these are normal reactions, and the key to how well children cope is the behavior of their own parents.

How You Can Help

• Remain as positive and proactive as possible: It’s hard, but you have to do your best to keep your own feelings in check. Do not panic and do not despair: if you face the disaster with strength and resolve, your kids are less likely to fall apart. Kids always, always look to their parents to know how to react to hardship, and they can sense your own fear or feelings of sadness.
• Once the immediate danger has passed and cleanup and remediation efforts are underway, take the time to let your children express their own feelings about what has happened. They need to know that their feelings of sadness at the loss of their routine, belongings and perhaps even their entire home are normal. Talk about how you feel too, always ending with an expression of hope and that your family will survive this.
• Engage in lots of reassuring personal contact: give them hugs, kisses, and squeezes.
• Don’t keep them in the dark: Explain to your children exactly how the disaster came about and what your plans are for preventing such events in the future. Encourage them to give their input so they will feel more in control of the situation.
• If safety allows, let your kids assist with cleanup efforts: they will feel like they are contributing and helping to make things right again.
• Understand that each of their belongings is important to them, even if it’s just an old stuffed animal: try to salvage as much of their things as possible. A good Utah disaster cleanup company like UDK may be able to make that precious teddy bear “well” again.
• Time heals, but you should expect some setbacks. Hearing about another disaster on TV or hearing a siren may reignite their insecurities. Don’t dismiss their concerns: instead, let them talk about it and do a lot of reassuring. If necessary, get them some counseling to assuage their fears.

A home disaster is hard on everyone, but children are especially vulnerable. Getting them back to their normal routines as quickly as possible makes a huge difference. UDK’s top of the line Utah disaster cleanup services can help your home as well as your whole family get back to normal life in the shortest amount of time possible.

–30% of businesses that suffer a major fire go out of business within a year. 70% fail within 5 years

–60% of companies that suffer major data loss for any reason will be out of business within 6 months.

– 93% of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster. Half of all companies that were without data management for 10 or more days filed for bankruptcy immediately (National Archives & Records Administration in Washington).

–And according to the Strategic Research Institute, once a disaster hits, companies that cannot resume normal operations within 10 days is simply not likely to survive at all.

Fortunately, an experienced Utah disaster cleanup company such as UDK now has the technological know-how to actually recover data from even the most severely-damaged electronic equipment. In fact, our recovery rate stands at about 90%: more than 15% higher than the national average. When you couple this capability with complete hardware restoration services, most if not all of your original systems can be up and running again within a week.

You will save money by:

Significantly decreasing your company down time

Avoid the inconvenience of continuing operations without your data

Avoid the costs associated with recreating the data

Save money by not having to replace as much hardware

Furnishings, office supplies, flooring, and basic structural elements of a business building are replaceable, but most business data simply is not. When it comes to such an important element of your business success, it is essential to choose a reputable Utah disaster cleanup company like UDK whose skilled technicians have been effectively retrieving business data for years: experience does matter!

You can smell it almost immediately when you walk into a room: mold has that unmistakably musty odor that is quite unlike any other. You search every closet, every wall, every nook and every cranny for signs of growth, but you just can’t seem to find any fuzzy black or green spots anywhere. So now what?

In the above scenario, chances are good that mold is present, but it’s forming behind the walls where it can’t be seen. Unfortunately, our Utah disaster cleanup mold specialists run into cases like this all too often: where homeowners suspect mold growth, but since they can’t see it they don’t do anything about it. Meanwhile those nasty colonies of mold spores continue their growth and spread unimpeded until they cause some serious property damage and possibly affect your family’s health too.

Some Moldy Tips…

• If you’ve had any kind of water damage to your home such as a leaky pipe, leaky ceiling, minor flooding, etc.  it is wise to call in a mold professional who can mitigate any possible problems quickly and non-invasively when possible. Even if you can’t see the mold, spores could be having a heyday behind your walls, in your ceilings, and in other invisible places. Waiting too long could necessitate total removal of drywall and even areas of your house’s framing.

• If some of the mold growth is visible, do not attempt to clean it up yourself without getting professional advice. Failure to remove mold right may send spores airborne where they can get into your ventilation system and thereby spread throughout the whole house.

• There is no such thing as “good” mold growth when it comes to your home: any kind of indoor mold is bad news. So don’t fall for the myth that only black-colored mold is harmful.

• Taking measures to prevent growth is always the best tip of all: keep humidity in your house at safe levels; this means using fans in bath and shower areas and never allowing water to stand or moisture to remain in basement areas or in crawl spaces. Pay immediate attention to unnatural sources of moisture such as pipe leaks and never let them go for weeks or months unchecked.

Professional experienced Utah disaster cleanup mold mitigation specialists like those at UDK are your most valuable partners in keeping or getting mold out of your house. If you even suspect there might be a possibility of a mold problem, don’t wait: now is the time to act.

Severe Winter Weather

• Keep pipes warm: Home flooding from burst frozen water pipes is actually quite common in northern Utah during the winter. Insulate pipes that are accessible or apply heating tape to keep them warm. If temperatures are predicted to dip well below freezing, let all faucets drip to prevent unprotected pipes from freezing.

• Ice dams: Keep your roof free from ice dams to prevent roof damage and costly interior leaks.

• Tree control: Heavy snow can cause limbs to break and possibly fall on your home. Keep branches trimmed well away from your structures and have dead trees removed as soon as possible.

High Winds

• Strengthen your roof: If your roof is more than 30 years old, it is probably time to replace it. At the very least, have a contractor come out and do an assessment of its strength. Replace missing shingles and repair holes and leaks.

• Tree control: Again, you want to keep your trees from becoming projectiles when high winds blow across the prairie or down from the canyons. Trees with shallow roots (such as spruces) that have grown large and were planted close to the house should be removed, and dead branches should be cut down on a regular basis.

Earthquake

• Secure bookcases: Bookcases and shelves should be properly secured using L- or Z-brackets. Make sure to attach the brackets to wall studs for extra security.

• Water heater and appliances: Water heaters up to 50 gallons should be secured as well using wood blocking strips. Keep the water heater upright. This will be a huge help in the prevention of fire damage following an earthquake. Large kitchen appliances such as a refrigerator should be anchored as well.

Wildfires

Wildfires have been common across the Intermountain West and in California too. As homes are built closer and closer to the mountains and natural areas, the risk of property damage from fire increases. The best plan for homeowners is creating “defensible space” through vegetation control. For more information about wildfire prevention, visit this link: http://www.disastersafety.org/resource/resmgr/wf_guides/wf_rockymountain.pdf

Do everything you can to prevent damage from natural causes: but if you need help with Utah disaster cleanup, UDK will be there for you.