Hundreds of Flooded Basements in Salem, OR

8/2/2021 (Permalink)

Moisture meter shows how high the drywall is affected past the point the water flooded to.

The ice storm last February was unlike anything most Oregonians have ever experienced. It wreaked havoc on the outside/exterior of homes with damage to (trees, plants, out structures, and tile roofing). It also caused massive structural damage from trees on homes). The storm also did a massive huge amount of interior damage, this came in the form of flooded basements. Flooded basements happened when the electricity went out, the basement sump pumps shut off, and while this is normally not a large problem…in this case, the electric stayed out for 7-10 days for thousands of homeowners. The sump pumps could not pump out all the water that continued to flood into their basements.

Here at SERVPRO, a flooded basement was the #1 call received. A close second was trees on homes. I will tell you an interesting fact when it came to inspecting these basements, by the time we arrived and inspected there was very little standing water left. One home I’ll never forget, the owner had used painters masking tape (brilliant idea) to mark out where the water came up to on the basement walls. You could also see the water line in many areas of the basement, but she was surprised to see how far up the wall the drywall was soaked past the point the water filled up to.

Drywall will hold water and expand; water will travel up inside of drywall much like a spider would on the outside. So, what looked like a foot of saturated drywall was over twice that amount. The finished product of this job was great though, we were able to return the homeowners basement back to a dry and safe environment.

We accomplished this by packing out and sanitizing first. We then did minimal demo, dehumidification, and airflow. We also deterred growth of microbes by applying anti-microbial products to any areas that met the storm water.

Part of the reason this job had the great outcome it did was that the homeowners took initiative! They invested in a generator right after the storm hit and flooded their basement, within a 24-hour period they had pumped out any standing water all by themselves! What Rockstar's!

If you would like to see pictures and read up on this historic Ice Storm, below is a link to an article The Stateman's Journal published and pictures they captured. Ice Storm Article.