Stories Winter Storm 2018: Pools in the Attic

12/13/2018 (Permalink)

There was so much standing water in the attic of a Greenville, SC business that it was pooling behind the paint on many of the walls.

There is never a good time to discover that you have a leak in your roof. That being said, there is also never a good time to discover that you have several leaks in your cigar shop’s roof. Add several inches of melting snow and ice to come running down your walls and through your light fixtures, and you’d have a pretty bad day.

Luckily when the business owner called his landlord, his landlord called SERVPRO of East Greenville County, we were already in the area handling another emergency call. Our production team leader rushed over to scope out the full situation, and our team was there with air movers, drying mats, and ready to extract the standing water in less than 90 mins after getting the call.

Our production team leader noticed that the shop’s ceiling was shallow compared to the height of the building, and even though repairing roofs is not our specialty, he thought he better check on how severe the damage is and try to identify the source. This was when he discovered that there were several pools of standing water in the attic of the building and took swift action to extract the water and prevent a potential catastrophe if the ceiling was to cave in or more spots began to leak on the merchandise in the store. The drying process took several days, so, unfortunately, the business did have downtime, but because our team was able to respond quickly and take swift action, several thousand dollars of inventory and sales equipment was able to be saved. So the store may have a week with no sales, but they will only have to replace a minimal amount of inventory, and that is a drastic reduction to the negative financial impacts.

Our team’s rapid response and experience limited the potential impacts to both the business and the building.