Water, Fire and Mold Damage Restoration in Burbank

Burbank learned what a burn scar does in the winter of 2018. The La Tuna Fire had burned close to 5,900 acres in the Verdugo Mountains in September 2017, and in early January a storm sent a debris flow down Country Club Drive. It swept away cars, trees and power poles, cut electricity to homes along the street, and the city proclaimed a local emergency for the hillside neighborhoods below the burn. Fire officials pointed to a debris basin above the street that was already loaded when the rain came.

The county enlarged debris capacity above the burn area afterward, but the lesson holds for every fire on those slopes. Burned ground sheds water and mud instead of soaking it up, so the first heavy storms after a fire send runoff toward homes that never had a drainage problem. Runoff that gets into a house that way carries mud, ash and debris, and it is handled as contaminated water from the start: removal, cleaning and disinfection, then drying.

Most Burbank calls are not on the hillside. They are in the flats: a water heater in the garage, a supply line under the kitchen sink, a washing machine hose, a slab leak in a postwar house, or a ceiling stain from a roof that let go in the first real rain of the season. Those begin as clean water, and the job is speed. Extraction comes first, then drying with logged moisture readings until the structure reads dry.

Burbank also has a large stock of apartments and condominiums, and water in a multifamily building rarely stays in one unit. A leak on an upper floor shows up below a day later and travels sideways through shared walls. We trace it to the source, check every unit it could have reached, and keep a separate photo and moisture record for each unit number so owners, managers and carriers are all looking at the same facts.

Older homes in the neighborhoods north of the Media District often sit on raised foundations, and water under a raised floor sits in the crawlspace where nobody looks. It keeps feeding moisture into the floor above until someone finds it. We take readings in the crawlspace and the floor, dry both, and log them until they hold.

Mold follows water that sat. A slow leak behind a vanity or a damp crawlspace can produce growth that is easy to miss until it smells. We handle mold under containment with HEPA filtration, and we tell you plainly what we found and where it was.

Before a crew arrives, shut off the water at the fixture or the main, keep the power off in rooms where water reached outlets, move what you can off the floor, and photograph every wet room before anything moves. If the water came from outside, stay out of it until it has been cleaned.

Burbank is also a working city, with studios, offices, restaurants and shops along Olive, Magnolia and San Fernando Boulevard. A business with water on the floor needs the public space back first, so we plan the job to reopen what is safe soonest, keep work areas contained, and schedule the loud steps around your hours when you ask. You get daily moisture logs and photos you can hand to a landlord and a carrier.

On insurance, we document the loss with photos, moisture readings and daily drying logs, estimate our own scope of work, and can bill your carrier directly for our services. Coverage questions belong to your carrier, your agent or a public adjuster you hire. We respond anywhere in Los Angeles, Orange County and Riverside around the clock, our technicians hold IICRC certifications, we work in English and Spanish, and the first inspection is free.