Smoke, Ash and Water Damage Restoration in Brentwood

Brentwood has been inside two fire lines in six years. The Getty Fire started around 1:30 a.m. on October 28, 2019, beside the 405 at Getty Center Drive, after wind snapped a tree branch into power lines. It burned 745 acres, destroyed 10 homes and damaged 15 more. The mandatory evacuation zone ran from the freeway west to Temescal Canyon Road and from Sunset Boulevard north to Mulholland Drive, and orders for the Kenter Canyon and Mountaingate area stayed in place until November 2.

Then on January 11, 2025, the Palisades Fire flared toward Brentwood and the mandatory zone grew east to the 405, with San Vicente Boulevard as its southern edge. That morning a house in the 3300 block of Mandeville Canyon Road burned, reported as the first home lost in the neighborhood, while people trying to leave sat in gridlock on Sunset south of the canyon. Families in the canyons lost homes in both fires, and cleanup does not undo that. Our work is for the houses that stood.

A house that stood can still be full of the fire. Fine soot and ash ride the wind for miles and settle where nobody wipes: attic insulation, return air ducts, the backs of closets, the tracks of sliding doors, the folds of drapes. Canyon houses with vents and eaves facing the slope tend to take more of it. Some residue stains or etches finishes the longer it sits, and the smell comes back every warm afternoon until the source is gone.

Order matters with smoke. Photograph every room and the furnace filter before anyone cleans, because that filter is dated evidence of what the house breathed. Keep receipts for everything you buy. Do not run the central air to clear the smell until the ducts have been looked at, or the residue rides into rooms that were clean. Then the work is methodical: HEPA vacuuming, dry sponging and wet cleaning of surfaces, odor treatment, and pack-out of contents that need cleaning off site, each item on a photographed inventory.

Houses that crews defended can take water too, from hose streams through a roof edge or a broken window, or from interior sprinklers that fired. That water lands on top of the soot. It gets extracted and the structure dried first, with moisture readings logged each day, because cleaning smoke off a wet wall only moves the stain around.

Away from the hillsides, Brentwood's water trouble is older and quieter. Around 3 a.m. on July 7, 2015, an 8-inch main believed to date from 1933 broke near Vicente Boulevard and Montana Avenue, flooding streets and buckling the road. On August 14, 2022, another 8-inch main gave way in the 100 block of Carmelina Avenue and sent several inches of fast water down the street. Street water that slides under a garage door has picked up whatever was on the pavement, so we disinfect before we dry.

Most calls still begin indoors: a supply line under an upstairs bathroom, a water heater in the garage, a dishwasher, an irrigation line soaking a foundation wall. The blocks south of San Vicente also hold apartment and condominium buildings, where a leak in one home is usually a leak in two or three. We follow the water from the unit where it began and log readings in every home it touched.

Mold starts where water sat out of sight: under a vanity, behind a refrigerator, in insulation above a ceiling stain. We set containment and HEPA filtration before anything moldy is disturbed, and we write down what we found and where, so you are not guessing about what was behind the wall.

For smoke and water losses alike, we photograph and log before work starts, keep daily readings, estimate our own scope of work, and can bill your carrier directly for our services. Whether a fire claim pays, and how much, is a matter between you and your carrier, your agent or a public adjuster you hire. We work anywhere in Los Angeles, Orange County and Riverside at any hour, our technicians hold IICRC certifications including fire and smoke restoration, and the first inspection is free.