 This is Ken Halevang, agricultural engineer with the NDSU Extension Service, and we're looking now at the second of the five segments on flooded house cleanup. In this one we're going to focus on the structure utilities and look at mold cleanup in the home. Typically, the first thing that the city or governmental unit will do is bring a team in and do an evaluation of the home. They'll look for structural hazards. They'll look to make sure that the electricity is shut off, that the gas is shut off, that there aren't any environmental dangers, and then they will post on the home some kind of a placard or sheet that indicates that that home has been inspected. And so this was what you will see as you come back to your flooded home. As you come though to that flooded home, it's important that you do your own evaluation. And the first thing that you're going to want to do is to look at the structure and really look for any signs of movement. Look for alignment, any bowing that's occurring, cracks that have showed up in the foundation or concrete or walls, any separation of joints. Look at the basement wall, the foundation. Make sure that everything is still in good shape. If you see something, then you really need to bring in a contractor or somebody else, a building inspector that can help you determine what's the structural integrity of that home. The other thing that you'll want to look for is floors and ceiling. Floors that have been flooded for an extended period of time may have delaminated, lost their structural strength, and it's important that you use some type of probe or board to really check that surface for strength as you're coming into the home. Also be looking up at the ceiling. If the whole house was flooded, portions of the ceiling may have fallen in, parts of it may still be hanging up there and might fall on you. Here's a couple of pictures that I took. The one on the left is obviously a home that has been moved off of its foundation and this home would be very difficult to reclaim. The picture on the right just shows you that there will be a lot of kind of surprising things as you come into your flooded home. This is a picture showing a mobile, one of these travel trailers, motor homes where it floated and during the flood and was actually pushed into the end of this house. And so you'll be wanting to look up high, down low, everywhere as you're coming back, checking for what the condition of that home and yard is as you're making your re-entry. As I indicated, the utility should have shut the electricity off but it's very important for you to verify that that electricity has been shut off before you start work. If we're in a home where part of it was flooded and part of it wasn't, make sure that the electricity is off in the areas where you will be working. And then I strongly encourage you to use a ground fault circuit interrupter on any equipment, electrical equipment that you're going to be using. If you don't have one available, I encourage you really to purchase one as is shown here in this center extension cord. It has the ground fault circuit interrupter right into that device. And so it's important to use a circuit interrupter because that is what's going to provide you your personal safety. It measures the electricity going out to the piece of equipment, coming back from the piece of equipment and if there's a difference it'll shut that circuit off immediately. And so if you're using shop vacs or anything else in a damp environment it's critical that you use a GFI in that circuit. Also make sure that the gas has been shut off to any of the heating appliances that might be in the home. As we're coming into a flooded home, frequently the power will be shut off so we'll need to provide some kind of emergency power, a standby or emergency generator to provide the electric power that we need for lighting and for tools and equipment that we're going to be using. One of the major hazards with a standby generator is that it's producing carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and other combustion pollutants. And we don't want that to be settling into the home where we're working. So make sure that that generator is off to the side, some distance from the house so that it has good circulation and ventilation around it. Things that you'll need to have as you're going in, lighting will need to be provided. You're going to be doing a lot of cleaning and tearing things apart so you'll need tools and equipment to do that. There will be a lot of materials to be called out of the structure so we'll need some type of containers for that garbage. There may not be bathroom facilities there so we need to think about that and then always make sure that we have a first aid kit. Mold grows very quickly if we have a warm damp environment. Sometimes it's very obvious as it's shown on the left side but frequently it'll be within wall cavities as shown in the middle where we really don't see it until we open up that wall cavity. But if the materials have been wet for an extended period of time we can expect that that will be a moldy environment. And on the right side there it shows mold growing on the back side of wallpaper. Mold loves glue and so any cellulose materials particularly glue that's used in home construction will likely have mold growth on it. Many times there's a tendency to want to know well does the mold that I have in my home causing me problems once I've done some of the cleanup and you can go out and buy a test kit similar to what's shown on the left side but that's not going to give us any kind of valid information because there's always mold spores in the air so if we set that test kit out that Petri dish out it'll always come back looking like the slide on the right the picture on the right. And that does not mean we have a mold problem it just means that there's mold spores in the air and there's always going to be mold spores floating around unless we're in a sterile hospital or a very sanitized environment certainly in the summertime we're going to have a lot of mold around and so testing for mold is strongly discouraged it's expensive if we do it correctly and generally we just need to be cleaning. It's important to remember that people react to mold whether it's living or dead so applying a biocide to it is not adequate killing it is not adequate sealing it into a wall is not adequate it needs to be physically removed and so as we're doing mold cleanup that's what we need to really keep in mind with porous materials sealing tile carpeting upholstered furniture wall board mold will actually grow into the material and there's no way to thoroughly remove the mold so we need to actually remove the porous materials remove these the carpet remove the wall board and move that to the outdoors. If we're looking at non porous surfaces hard metal glass those kinds of things then we can just wash it with a detergent solution sanitize it with a biocide if we want but again thorough drying is important with semi porous materials basically the structural lumber the floor joists studs in the wall seal plates etc there again we need to be removing the mold and making sure that we're adequately drying those materials we should not be thinking of using bleach we shouldn't be thinking of using other biocides just physically remove the mold from from the structure. Sometimes people think that if they seal the mold into a wall cavity that it's not a problem anymore but air will move from the outside through the wall cavity and into the inside of a home if you put your hand over an electrical outlet in the winter time when the wind is blowing generally you can feel cool breeze and that air will be coming through that wall picking up some of the mold fragments some of the molds bores that might still be in there and bringing that into the living space so it's critical that we thoroughly clean the walls and any other enclosed cavities as part of our cleanup process. If we have a home where part of that house is not been contaminated has not been flooded what we want to do is to isolate that from the other part of the house that has been flooded so as we do the cleanup we're not contaminating the clean part of the house think about the the heating system the ventilation system air conditioning system try to seal that generally what is used is some type of plastic or poly sheeting and then we want to create a negative pressure in the dirty area put a fan blowing the air to the outdoors creating a vacuum in the dirty area so that if there's any air leakage it's coming from the clean part of the structure into the dirty part rather than the dirt going into the clean part so very important that we contain the area that we're working in that brings us to the close of our second section and now we'll be looking at the actual cleanup process and drying the structure in the next two phases.