 It's Thursday, 3 o'clock, welcome to Condo Insider. I'm Richard Emory, your host of today's show. Last week we had Sue Savio, we were talking about the various types of insurance an association has to carry as required by law. It made me think we've had some notable fires and explosions in the last few days about what do you do when you have a disaster? What do you do to protect your property? So I decided to invite down to the show today my good friends from Premier Restoration Hawaii to talk about the various problems and challenges you have when you've experienced some form of a disaster. So I want to invite Bob Egbert and Brent Bennett here who's from Premier Restoration Hawaii. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Tell us a little bit about your company just so we know who you are. Yeah, well the brief bio. So our company, we've been around 16 years, we're a locally owned company and we started out of Maui so it was the first 15 years there and a year ago we opened up here in Oahu and it's just been, well we're very appreciative of the welcome that we have received I should say. So it's kept us busy but more about the type of work that we do, we're a full service organization when it comes to disaster response or mitigation and restoration and that includes water, water remediation, response, structural drying, mold remediation, there's some contents management and these are all things that have a lot of details in them, asbestos abatement and then of course on the backside we're a general contractor and we put it all back together. That's the reconstruction component. Well when I look at your website I notice you are proud of the fact that you're a part of DKI I think it is. Tell us who DKI is and what that means to your organization. Yeah, that's a great question. DKI, DKI Disaster Cleanup International, it is a group of best in class independent restoration companies nationwide and as an organization they have the largest single footprint nationwide to respond both locally and to disasters, these cats as they call them, hurricanes and what not on a large scale. So for us the benefit of having that relationship is it just rounds us out. So no joke job and there's no job too small, no job too large here locally for us to handle. When it gets to be an event that is of a significant magnitude we need to lean on some friends. You simply don't have the resources if there's a huge storm or a hurricane, something of that nature. Our relationship with DKI gives us that kind of resource and we feel as though even though the probability as they measure it from year to year, the probability of an event of that kind is low, it's not a matter of if but when and it's part of our responsibility to the community to be prepared in a way that's useful. One off hand question I just thought of that we didn't discuss before the show. If for example you had a apartment in a condominium and let's say the resident manager died and you have this cleanup after the death because maybe he wasn't found for a couple of days and there's the issues of health and bodily fluids, do you do that kind of work? Yes you're talking about a biohazard clean clean and response, yes we do. So on the unfortunate currents and those things they do happen, we can handle that as well. Sure. So how many employees do you have? We have as of last week, right around 115 employees. Wow, you're a big company, Hawaii standards anyway. Well seven months ago we had about 52 employees, we've had to respond to a number of demands in the marketplace in a way that's prompted us to grow in that way. So one of the things I was talking to Susabi out about last week was that people often understand this and when you had this start with I think the most common is a water leak or a water problem in my opinion anyway, I see more of that. You don't want to wait to call the insurance company and file a claim before you do something because the longer you wait the bigger the damage is potentially and so you want to call a restoration company right away to deal with that. So if I was to call your company what kind of service can I expect? You can expect great service but what you can expect more than that is someone on the end of the phone. So on the water response side and you're correct, I mean even when I look through the insurance trade journals which I don't do frequently but water losses they lead when it comes to dollar sums. But if somebody has a water loss they can call us anytime 24-7, we're staff 24-7, we have a call center 24-7 and we're going to be there to begin that initial response inside a two hour window on Oahu and Maui. So you're designed for immediate response? We are designed for emergency response, yes. Absolutely. And fortunately it wasn't a nuclear missile response that we were dealing with. Well I think we were all heading for the culverts on that one. I think so but so I think that's a common misunderstood in the industry though is that when you have this claim whether it be water or wind or whatever it may be and we'll get into those specifics in a minute is that you need to take action right away And your short answer to the reason you take action right away is? To mitigate further damage and the faster that you respond to an incident or an emergency no matter how slight the less damage that ultimately happens. So it's a matter of money and it's a matter of preserving your property and health and safety. Yeah and frankly as Sue was saying you have a legal obligation as a board or an owner to mitigate your damage you just can't sit there and do nothing with the damage get worse and worse so you have to do something. So let me ask you this I titled this show fire, wind and water and although there are certain some other perils and some things that fire, wind and water bring to one's attention let's start with the water claim. What is an example of a kind of a claim you've had and or a situation how you dealt with it which is all the issues were? Yeah you know for that I'd like to defer to Brent and he has a very intimate knowledge of these claims and work. And the difference between your two as far as what you do for the company are? So yeah for me primarily it's business development, sales and marketing and things of that nature although I go out and I get certified and try to keep myself educated. Brent has been with the company for a number of years and now is our commercial account manager and a little different than residential side the jobs are usually larger, longer jobs but nonetheless he has a depth of experience when it comes to being that pointy end of the spear and responding to those water leads, those water calls in the middle of the night. And so he's your marketing, he's the guy that has to live up to all the promises you make. He does but I only promise what he can deliver. Okay so talk about what our give us an example of a claim and how you dealt with it and you know without getting too specific but give us a general explanation. Yeah without sharing any property names or anything like that, fire sprinkler break in a hotel or you know obviously the damage is there, the longer you sit and wait the more damage is going to occur so call whether it's in the middle of the night or during the day, respond as fast as you can, get the water sucked up, get the property dried out and you're avoiding probably your next question of the mold issue at that point by responding quickly. Sewer backups especially in Waikiki is a huge problem with the sewer systems and stuff so obviously. So when you say you do that and without getting very specific you said you water cleaned up and drying so kind of elaborate a little bit more with what's involved and when you have that fire sprinkler system that breaks. Well the first thing is getting standing water off the ground I mean that's first and foremost and then to salvage anything that can be saved you know framing of the building or building materials that aren't necessarily destroyed by the water. Get those dried out back to a dry standard as they call it a normal moisture content and then you know you're good for repairs at that point. Depending on the category of water then you get into sewage loss and stuff like that, contaminated water, basically you're removing anything that got wet. So I assume that one of the issues, potential issues is if you don't do that is what we call mold right and everybody gets for some reason they get the fear of mold but my understanding is there's lots of molds and some of them are toxic and some of them are not. Can you describe that a little bit more for us? There's not really a mold that's good for you is I guess the fast answer to that but there's mold everywhere so you're never going to get rid of it it's part of nature you know you're always going to have mold spores in the air but there's a tolerance that humans should be around basically is the easy answer for that so we try to keep it at that normal you know doing mold remediation projects and stuff like that so get it safe to inhabit the building and property. So if you had mold, any special precautions you have to take to remove mold or is it pretty much a sponge and Clorox? You don't want to use Clorox you know being water based you actually probably add to the problem more than fix it and with mold you're not trying to kill it. Mold is dangerous for a human whether it's dead or alive it's the spores you're breathing in so the way to clean it is you clean it you get rid of it remove it from wherever you're trying to remediate so whether you kill it or not that's not the correct way. So how do you get rid of it what do you do? HEPA vacuum we have equipment air scrubbers and stuff like that you want to contain off the area so you're not cross contaminating potentially unaffected areas of the house or property and but HEPA equipment is the way to remove it. Now under normal circumstances does that person removing it have to wear any protective gear or is it just pretty much not that dangerous that the vacuum with the filter will do the job? You definitely want to wear PPE respirators and insuits gloves and eye protection you know depending on a degree of demolition or removal that you're doing but you know you're almost making it worse like you just said with the vacuum cleaner trying to clean it up yourself without the proper equipment you're you're probably making it worse whether it looks like it or not you're probably making the situation worse by cross contaminating. So it's feasible if you tried to do it yourself and you thought you cleaned it up you really left all the spores there and you may still have a biohazard anyway because it wasn't properly contained and cleaned up and vacuumed away is that correct you can't you can't really see if you clean the air mold spores or something the human eye is not going to be able to detect so trying to trying to clean something you can't see basically is difficult so. Now do you agree that most of the claims you see are water claims? By volume, by volume most of the claims that we see are water. So if you had this one apartment that had a major water break that's broken it's water all over the place and but still contained within the one apartment it probably makes sense for them to call a restoration company like yourself to to properly clean it up and it would be theoretically if they had to write insurance policies be covered by insurance. Yes absolutely it makes sense to call that's that simple I mean with the extractions Brent was saying extraction of the water as a first step it's the drying component you want to make sure that the materials are dry you know mold grows where there's water where there's food and where there's a spore so. So if an owner calls you and you're responding immediately and you're getting somebody in within two hours are you working with them because maybe they don't have their credit card handy right that moment I mean and you know it's gonna be paid by insurance I mean yeah if they if they have insurance insurance generally covers this you've got a broken washer line in your home or something like that you can call us we can respond we we can respond before the claim is even filed insurance companies will will reimburse for that work for that emergency work we do it all the time we've got great relationships with insurance companies and it's not it's usually not a problem. We're not going to tell you no if you don't have a credit card on hand when you call us. Yes I was wondering if people are afraid to call some time no I didn't get my paycheck till Friday and what am I going to do and and my experience is that I haven't come across forever an issue where in the condo or an association where they didn't have insurance it's required by law and that they're better off yeah calling right away and mitigating the problem than not mitigating the problem. You're better off to call early call early respond fast is gonna be less damage less cost we do I mean we run into well we see everything just because of the volume of work that we do how we run into homeowners that aren't insured and so that's a whole another conversation. My last comment before we take a break was I remember a project of ours that they had a gas leak and the gas leak was significantly I could blow up the building and so we went ahead and got a plumber right away to turn the gas off just that was really only damaged the leak of the gas. I remember the board saying to me did you get three bids to turn the gas off? No look at our contract we had the right to make decisions to take life and safety and obviously it's probably more important to turn the gas off sooner than later than it is to go get three bids particularly when it's covered by insurance. Absolutely I would support that. So now last little comment before we go back into wind and fire and smoke and the rest of it we're gonna take a short break we'll be back in one minute. Aloha I'm Keeley Ikeena and I'm here every other week on Mondays at 2 o'clock p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii Together. In Hawaii Together we talk with some of the most fascinating people in the islands about working together working together for a better economy government and society so I invite you into our conversation every other Monday at 2 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network join us for Hawaii Together. I'm Keeley Ikeena. Aloha. Hello I'm Dave Stevens host of the Cyber Underground this is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that's just kind of scare you out of your mind so come join us every week here on ThinkTechHawaii.com 1 p.m. on Friday afternoons and then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube all our shows will show up and please follow us we're always giving you current relevant information to protect you keeping you safe. Aloha. Welcome back to Kondo Insider we're sitting here talking to Bob and Brent from Premier Restoration Hawaii about what do you do when you have a disaster and the importance of taking action right away we discuss a little bit about water damage and mold and we're gonna get into wind and we talk about wind and fire and asbestos so we have a short show so let's get right into the wind and we're not talking about my hot air we're talking about the wind of either a high windstorm or a hurricane so what do you do in a case like that what are the typical problems you encounter with a wind roofing there's the main thing roofing and an intrusion from usually you got wind you got rain it's a lot of issues trees blown over hitting people's houses or property and as usually the wind leads to water intrusion most of the time is what we see so or board ups you know broken windows and stuff we've dealt with we can do board ups on basically the secure property and your roof blows off you don't want to hole in your roof even if it's not raining so and the goal is to keep the water out and minimize further damage I mean that's right I know that was on Kauai in 1992 with Hurricane at Iki and there's always so much you can do but preventing future water penetration because you've got the thing buttoned up as best you can is an important factor and of course after a major hurricane you may be talking months before you can actually make the final repair with regard to a building but you want to try to maintain its livability to a degree because there's always else to go yeah but you know I don't understand that it doesn't have to be a hurricane there's windstorms that are just wind yeah they create these kind of problems yep yeah and we we see roofs they get peeled up frequently and we get the call in the middle of the night and we go we'll respond and we'll do the emergency board up and we'll do it after a fire even you know the firemen have other things to do right they could clean up their gear and get ready to respond to the next call and leave it to companies like ours to secure the area and make it safe and clean well fire has been on everybody's mind recently because of Marco Polo I'm sure you've heard of that absolutely are you doing any work at Marco Polo yes we are what are you doing well we've done right now it's all asbestos abatement and you know prior to the abatement and especially initially after the fire we did that initial mitigation there was just a huge amount of water in the building from fighting the fire water below the source units and smoke above so that that was that was how it all started at this point it's cleaning up that asbestos and we hear the word asbestos all the time tell us why that's a health hazard or what the issue is on asbestos and particularly about who can remove asbestos I mean it's not just anybody off the street yeah it asbestos is and so you're lucky you caught me just as I finished my asbestos training so they haven't just enough knowledge to be dangerous but asbestos you know it causes asbestosis there was really you know patterns that the government found years ago based on really shipyard works and things like that pipe coverings but once they learned that asbestos was you know a hazardous material it started to become regulated that was 80 or 86 so it's been some time and essentially it's in building materials flooring joint compounds roof tiles things like that and when it's intact it's not a problem but when it's disturbed like in a fire or if you start to cut it or if you sand it or scrape it those little those particulates the crystals they become as it's friable material they call it it's airborne and that's when you start to breathe it in when you can so that is what created the regulatory environment around handling asbestos is is really a matter of health and safety and what is the requirement now to handle asbestos what do you have to do yeah it's it's significant with them you've got to what normally happens if we go to an asbestos job where there's a job that is an abatement job we'll bring a third party consultant in an environmental consultant they'll assess it they'll they'll do a survey and provide information about what is present and what the scope of work is and the rules of the road what needs to happen all of our work resides within there so we'll put up containment much as when Brent was talking about the mold you know I've negative air pressure inside containment the guys wear the PPE the suits the respirators and it's a pretty stringent from a cleanliness standpoint there's pretty stringent you have to be cleared when it's all done you need to be a certified abatement technician supervisor to even be on site in NEO's project so is it my understanding to that if you didn't have those certifications that you may be subject to big fines and problems with government you know an enforcement because EPA and always EPA but anything other than if you're a homeowner and you want to work in your own home and you know it's just as it's asbestos containing materials you have the right to do that anything other than that is regulated and yeah you the Department of Health takes it very seriously but if you're in your own home would you recommend them to themself I would but that all depends on you know if how concerned you are about your own health you put yourself at risk and the risk of getting in trouble with fines and stuff if you don't dispose of it properly and it's not just the removal it's what you do with it after it's correct you know even your living room for the next 20 years then that's that's your issue but you're gonna have to get rid of it and there's ways that needs to be done yeah the whole chain of custody how about lead paint that an issue for you guys are yeah lead paint is an issue that was an issue of Marco Polo too right or not you know I I don't know I specifically I wouldn't be surprised if it was and what do you do on lead paint issues is a matter of just painting over it what is the issue on that well you could paint over lead paint if you if you chose to do that if you're doing a renovation and you're gonna disturb that material just like the asbestos as you run into the same scenario it's a regulated material and you have to treat it as such so if you're taking out a piece of drywall it's got lead paint on it you would have to well if there's there's a there is a provision in the live it's a small enough you know patch then you can you can remove it but there are still certifications that come with that you'd want to us as an asbestos abatement contractor we can remove a little bit of you know lead based paint you from the wall or a sectional wall the specifics I'd have to check with our abatement manager on that so going back to you Brad take a fire and let's forget about Marco Polo for a second what do you do when you have a fire what do you what do what are the basic steps what are the things you look at what do you do well creating a secure building is probably the first step you know a lot of burglaries a lot of crime around these scenes unfortunately there's people that target you know those areas when they see it on the news you know it's an easy break in there's no one there also secure in the building is number one preventing any further damage whether that's water from the fire department or you know any hazards that could be inside the home hanging building materials and stuff like that and after all that you're starting to clean up so you're moving the source of the fire to charred materials or burnt drywall or whatever it may be and then start the cleaning process have vacuum again like mold wiping with different different chemicals to get the smoke odor and the fire grease and stuff off the walls floor or whatever maybe because I know that in a lot of the big fires when there's potential insurance claims and defendants you're able to do your initial remediation the mitigation say a call without having to wait for some insurance company there are some defense lawyer to come and say no you can't disturb this you can do your initial mitigation without too much you don't want to disturb the scene ever and that's a problem some sometimes arises that you know people want you to get in there and react right away but fortunately like a fire investigators that fire department hasn't released the scene yet yeah you don't want to touch it especially you know if someone loses a life or potentially you could jeopardize that insurance claim so their claim is denied if you're if you're moving stuff around or you know and who makes the decision whether someone can go back in and occupy the space occupy the space would be ultimately between us and insurance and the homeowner you know tell their satisfied with the most structurally damaged with is it possible the city or someone would say no this we're condemning the space and we hire engineers to come in and take a look at like structural engineers if it's if it's jeopardized the framing or you know the structure of the building that doesn't always happen sometimes it's occasion fire you got burnt drywall that's an easy one but there's been some jobs like again not naming any names that we've had to bring in those structural guys to clear it basically so we're at the end of our show and I guess the the summary of this would be when you have a fire wind rain storm whatever it may be you should call an expert to assist you and take a prompt action right away to mitigate the problem and using professionals because of all the environmental and hazardous type issues that may surface and try to do it yourself may not be a good idea and certainly for an association you're covered by insurance and you should take that so I want to thank both of you for being here today it's very insightful for our viewers and I want to thank all of our viewers for watching condo insider Hawaii show about association living that's remembered about 38 percent of our population lives in an association and we hope you find our show informational and useful aloha