A RIDE ON THE POLAR PLUNGE

1/22/2018 (Permalink)

Polar Plunge bring many water losses

This article is not about the newest ride at Six Flags or even a recent dive into frigid water. It’s a real-time follow of our work as it relates to the recent downturn in  temperatures. News media have referred to it as the “Polar Plunge” and it has gripped most of the country.

The weather had been cold from time to time this winter but it was New Year’s Eve when temperatures dropped to single digits. The low was four degrees that day with a high of 14. New Year’s day was worse with a low of -4 and a high of 10. The temperatures stayed dangerously low until Jan. 7 when the high was 40. 

It was so cold on New Year’s Eve that a lot fewer people went out to celebrate. One could easily get a table at favorite restaurants that are usually packed this time of the year.  Fox news reported that in St. Louis events such as Winterfest, Six Flags, and activities at Westport and the City of Kirkwood all canceled due to the bitter cold.     
Most of us settled in at our homes, staying as warm as possible and waiting out the frigid temperatures.  Being the owner of a mitigation company, my mind was on frozen pipes. Most of you don’t dream about frozen pipes when it gets cold, but when you’re in the business, that’s what you do.  I knew that we would get calls about frozen pipes, the problem is you just can’t gauge how many calls you will get. How many people will be in need of your services? Will we be able to serve everyone? Do we have enough equipment? Do we have enough staff?

Those questions would soon be tested, because on New Year’s Day at about 1 p.m. we received our first call. The loss notes read, “Pipe burst in bathroom, affected basement below. Carpet ceramic and drywall affected.” I got the crew moving and they were on-site in a little over an hour’s time. The crew was ready. We had all discussed our readiness, we have prepared for this and we knew the upcoming week should be very busy.  A normal water loss takes about four hours to complete from start to finish, and this one was no exception. Just as the crew got back to their homes and started to settle in, we received our second call at 5:46 p.m. The loss notes read, “Pipe burst under sink. 2” of water in main level and water ran to the partially finished basement.” I hated to make the call to our on-call crew, but they were willing and ready to go. On this one I told them I’d meet them there, I’d get the paperwork going and figure out what’s needed hoping that would save them some time. I arrived in under an hour and did just that. Met with the customer, walked through the loss. Went over how we are going to handle things, got authorizations signed and diagramed and took pictures. A little later my crew arrived and a few hours later we had gotten everything taken care of. Back at home and in bed by 10:30pm!

Nothing more that night, but the morning of Jan. 2 we received our first job of the day. 2” of water in a commercial restaurant in Union. Commercial jobs are a little different than residential. Typically a homeowner can stay in their home while drying is going on. It tends to be a little uncomfortable at times with the noise and heat, but it’s doable. On commercial jobs, the biggest concern is loss of business.  Our job is to get that business back in business as soon as possible. We were there in 10 minutes  from dispatch and quickly started extracting water and setting drying equipment. If needed, the restaurant could stay open during the drying process with little distraction. While still working on this one, two more new losses got called in. I peeled a couple people off the current job and got them going on the newest one. The other crew was to finish up and head to the other one. Everything worked well and both customers were taken care of. We finished both jobs around 3:30 and just in time for another job. This one was in Leslie and required a total gut of an apartment. At this point, equipment was getting scarce and the crews were getting tired. Myself and Mike, our marketing rep, headed to the Leslie job to see what all it entailed. We did all of the upfront work and waited on the crew to get there, explaining what should be done and handing them off to the customer. Mike and I still had water checks (monitoring) to do on yesterday’s jobs! When we are this busy, it’s all hands on deck. Even marketing reps get dirty!

We all finished up at around 9:00 p.m. that night and thankfully no new jobs were called in. Get some rest, I’m sure there will be no relief tomorrow!  On Jan. 3 we had a couple new jobs called in but plenty of time to get to them. When you’re used to doing four jobs in a day, two seems pretty easy.  We pitched in to get the water checks done for all of the jobs. Except there was one big problem. We were out of equipment and so were all of our neighboring franchises.  No one to borrow equipment from, so knowing that this even is not over, I put a call into corporate and ordered more. If all went right, it would be here by noon tomorrow.  We are so lucky to have the backing of SERVPRO Corporate.  Who else could get equipment mobilized that quickly in the middle of a crisis like this?

Jan. 4 we had a residential loss called in. The good news is some of the earlier jobs were dry so we could move equipment to this one. Approximately 9:30 a.m. a church in Pacific called. “I know you guys are busy, but we need help. A main in our attic burst and we literally had 6 inches of water in our entire facility.”  I instantly redirected myself and headed to the church.  Volunteers had worked all night with multiple shop vacuums to get the standing water up. What a great job they did. Now it’s up to us to complete any demolition needed and set drying equipment.  Drying equipment, what drying equipment I said to myself? I hope corporate comes through with the new equipment that I just bought!  We immediately got going on the needed demolition,  removing drywall and insulation that was falling, removed cove base and set the little bit of equipment we had. Just as we finished Anita in the office called and said, “You have some shiny new equipment here!” 

We ran to the office, uncrated everything. We entered it into our tracking system and off to the church it went.   On Jan. 5 we received a couple more losses but were able to move equipment from other jobs as they dried. Jan. 6 started a warm up that got us to 40 degrees by Jan. 7. The Polar Plunge was over and we had survived! 
The most important takeaway from this is that we are ready and able to handle anything that comes our way.  All of our customers were taken care of and are able to get on with their lives.  We couldn’t have been able to flawlessly handle the Polar Plunge without our great group of employees and the backing of SERVPRO Corporate.

That was our one event for the winter, I guess we can just slide into spring now.