4 Items That Are Easy to Save from an Office Fire

10/17/2023 (Permalink)

Office fires are never easy to deal with, and your top priority should be your safety if you are ever faced with such a situation. Many people make the mistake of going for belongings during a fire, which only puts them in danger and can even be fatal. 

During a fire situation, you need to know exactly what to do in terms of where the exits are and what the best practices are, and you also need to know what your priorities should be when it comes to trying to save belongings. Here is a list of a few things that you can save without too much effort while also staying safe. 

Electrical Equipment 

Considering the importance of digital equipment in the modern workspace, you will undoubtedly have plenty of expensive electronics that have valuable data on them. One of the best things you can do to protect these types of equipment is to simply unplug it from the power source to prevent it from being damaged by an electricity spike and then move it to a safer location. 

Moving the equipment to a different floor or even a safer area on the same floor can save it from being damaged by the fire. You can take small electrical devices with you, such as hard drives, as they are easy to carry and aren't very difficult to grab when you are in a rush. 

Papers

Physical documents are also very important. A good way to prepare for the situation is to have a storage routine for these documents. Having a separate filing cabinet for all critical documents will make it much easier to locate and recover these papers in an emergency. 

You can go a step ahead by properly organizing these documents, so, in an emergency, you can go directly to the most important documents. Rescuing papers is a good idea because the fire will destroy them. 

Computers

Most times, the data on the computers will only be on the computer itself. For instance, all your network data may only be saved on the main server in the office. Rather than trying to recover all the different workstations, just focus on recovering the main server. 

This way, you may lose some information that was distributed on other systems, but you will at least save the bulk of the digital assets on the server. Ideally, you should also have data backed up on two more devices so you can take the other backup devices with you if you can't reach the servers. 

Furniture

When a fire breaks out, the best thing you can do to manage it is try to contain it. Removing flammable objects such as furniture can help reduce the chances of the fire expanding to other areas. 

A good move is to remove furniture from the path of the fire and from places such as windows and doorways. This way, it will be much easier to control the fire later on, and you can also direct which way the fire develops. If possible, you can take some furniture with you, or you can simply throw it out of the office space, so it doesn't get destroyed by the fire.

Conclusion

Fire recovery systems have come a long way, and even very sensitive items can be restored to a great degree. If there is something that you can safely recover while you escape, then recover it; otherwise, try and put it out of harm's way so there is a higher chance of recovery later on. The experts at SERVPRO have the skills and the equipment to help you bounce back from a fire. Get in touch with the fire remediation team at SERVPRO as soon as possible to have the best chance of recovering your assets.