PUTTING SMOKE DAMAGE TO THE TEST
Chemical Sampling Can Help Clear Smoke-Related Questions

By Lawrie N. Ackerman

PICTURE THIS
You are the MIS director of a large manufacturer. A fire erupts in your building over a long holiday weekend, leaving your mainframe, networked desktops and other equipment alternately coated with thick, black smoke and a light dusting of soot, mixed with water from the firefighting effort. What’s more, the plant manager tells you most of his machinery and controls have been similarly affected. You stand in the midst of your crippled equipment, facing business interruption, lost data and all manner of potential customer liabilities. The following questions are in the forefront of your mind:

• How bad actually is the damage?
• Will you need to replace everything, spending hours reconfiguring and reprogramming?
• Can anything be salvaged?
• What type of damage has occurred (heat, smoke, or just a little grime)?

This article presents a way to accurately identify the nature and extent of damage from smoke contamination. Without quantification, too much is left to guesswork, which can lead to costly mistakes. Also, without concrete proof of the damage you’re facing, it can be difficult to justify your actions and costs incurred in mitigation to your insurance carrier—and your bosses—when they review the process later.

FIRE CHEMISTRY 101
Let’s review the basic chemical processes in a typical fire. In almost every fire, plastic gets melted or burned in ceiling tiles, insulation, furniture, computer components and a range of other items. The burning plastics, which are composed of polyvinyl chlorides (PVCs) release chlorides to mix with the soot and smoke. This chloride-tainted smoke combines with water and moisture from firefighting efforts to form weak hydrochloric acid. This acidic soot penetrates every nook and cranny, potentially causing widespread corrosion.

Back to your plant: This "chemical soup" is all over your building. If any computers were turned on during the fire, the internal cooling fans sucked in the contaminants. Powered-off computers and machinery likely have soot inside them, courtesy of air currents flowing around the facility. Dust deposits normally inside such equipment readily absorb the mixture. These corrosive hydrochloric acids attack metals, putting your machinery and computers at risk.

WHAT DO YOU DO?
How should you evaluate this situation? Obviously, high levels of hydrochloric acid and adverse environmental conditions can hasten corrosion. Restoration technicians can help combat this by neutralizing, cleaning and drying equipment, returning it to pre-loss condition, or better. However, you must first determine if it’s economically viable to restore, how quickly the process can be performed, and whether restoration is even possible. Surprisingly, the nastiest-looking fire can be relatively harmless in terms of chloride levels. What looks at first glance like a total loss can actually be a fairly simple restoration job. Additionally, restoration costs may be only 20 to 40 percent of hardware replacement. In addition, the replacement option would incur significant costs for hours spent reconfiguring and reprogramming your computers and network.

Chemical sampling is a tried-and-true method of getting solid answers to these questions. Samples are taken all over the affected area, then sent to a lab to determine levels of chlorides and other harmful chemicals. Findings can help determine what is recoverable and what isn’t, which items are most at risk, approximately how long restoration will take, how long a piece of equipment can remain in operation before corrosion sets in, etc. Also, "before and after" samples can confirm restoration’s effectiveness-evidence that will satisfy adjusters and bosses. Sophisticated restoration companies may check for contamination with chemical test strips. While these strips don’t provide the hard numbers of certified lab findings, they give a good idea of what items are contaminated, and how badly.

Various industry standards and publications can help you interpret findings. For example, according to the Department of Energy, a chloride sample of 30 to 200 micrograms per inch squared (u/in2) indicates the item can be restored easily. Depending on how much higher the levels are, restoration is either difficult, very difficult or not viable. In some cases, chloride levels may be so high that long-term usability of equipment is left in jeopardy. Even so, restoration can at least bring a business up to half-speed until additional equipment can be put in place. Also, restoration can preserve crucial hard drives until a full data recovery process can be performed.

Follow-up chemical testing is important. Equipment may look spotless, but only testing will confirm it. Re-testing can also tell you if equipment has been recontaminated (by materials stirred up by foot traffic or carried through dirty HVAC ducts). Most important, test results can prove that your business is back in good health, that restoration is complete, and that, once and for all, the smoke has cleared.

About the Author
Lawrie Ackerman, electrical engineer, is President of Asset Recovery Technologies, Inc., an engineering firm specializing in evaluation and restoration of electrical, mechanical and electronic equipment. For more information,call (800) 805-0644, or visit www.disasterhelp.com