If you own or manage a retail store, a fire is probably one of your greatest fears. Even if no one is hurt, your stock, property, and livelihood can suffer massive amounts of damage in only a few minutes. The size of your store, scale of the fire, and type of stock you carry can all impact the level of harm, but even a small fire often leaves behind a confusing and overwhelming mess. In this article, we will break down the ways that a fire can damage your retail store, and how your business can get help with recovering from each one.
Three Specific Ways That Retail Stores Are Impacted By Fires
According to a 2015 report from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), retail stores have the second highest amount of fires when compared to all commercial properties in the United States. Fire departments respond to more than 13,000 fires at retail stores each year. With causes including electrical issues, cooking accidents, and intentional fires, retail blazes result in close to $604 million in property damage annually.
Even if you have sprinkler systems and fire extinguishers, fires can quickly cause large amounts of devastation that impact you, your team members, and your customers. There are three main types of losses that retail stores can experience after a fire. Here is an explanation of each one.
Fire damage to your products: Even if the fire doesn’t actually touch all parts of your store, damaging smoke and soot can. Smoke and soot contain dangerous chemicals – the fire damage restoration clean-up process is not simple. It can be hard for store owners to know what needs replacement, and what can successfully be cleaned.
Fire damage to your building: Fires, and the water and chemicals used to put them out, can cause both superficial and structural issues with many parts of your property. The longer you wait to start fire damage restoration process, the worse these issues can get.
Shut-down time: While repairs and restocks occur, your employees aren’t working, and your customers aren’t shopping. These problems can quickly compound if you don’t get quick and efficient assistance.
How to get Your Business Open Again After a Fire
Thankfully, a fire restoration expert can help make even your worst fears manageable. Partnering with an experienced fire damage restoration contractor can help you mitigate all three of those loss types. Here’s how we deal with each one.
Cleaning and Restoration of Retail Store Contents
At McMahon Services and Construction, we have advanced cleaning and restoration techniques that can be used to save many types of products, equipment, displays, furnishings, and more. We can restore so that you don’t have to replace, resulting in big savings.
Fire Damage Restoration and Reconstruction
Getting your property back to normal after a fire requires two phases of help: Restoration and reconstruction. Fire and smoke damage restoration includes steps like board up services, water removal (from the water the fire department used to extinguish the fire), dealing with smoke and soot damage, and eliminating lingering smoke odors. The second step, reconstruction, includes rebuilding your property.
Less Shut Down Time
Our Grayslake, Mundelein, and Schaumburg area retail and commercial property clients who have used us for both the fire damage restoration services and reconstruction services have expressed how seamless it was to go from one phase to the next. By using a full service company, it can speed up the entire process, and offers savings in both the forms of time and money. This will get your store back open (and your employees working and your customers happy) as quickly as possible.
A Local Fire Damage Restoration Contractor
Finally, we can work directly with your insurance company to ensure that you get the full benefits provided by your policy. Having help from an experienced, local fire damage restoration company is critical when you are dealing with an overwhelming situation like a fire. From Evanston to Oak Park, we can help you get your doors open again as soon as possible, while keeping your team and customers safe. Whether you have experienced a fire at your retail business, or just want an assessment of your store or commercial property, contact us today to get the help you need.