After a fire, smoke does more of the damage than flame

A small kitchen fire can leave an entire house unusable, because smoke travels everywhere the air does and soot settles on everything. Worse, soot is corrosive — it etches metal, discolours grout and marble, and yellows plastics, and it does that progressively over days. The window for saving certain materials is genuinely short.

Different fires leave different residues

Protein fires from cooking leave almost no visible soot but a strong, penetrating odour and a greasy film that resists ordinary cleaners. Synthetic fires — plastics, electronics, upholstery — leave black smeary soot that spreads badly if wiped wrong. Natural material fires leave dry powdery soot that vacuums off comparatively well. Each needs different chemistry, and using the wrong one drives residue into the surface permanently.

The sequence

• Stabilise — board-up and tarping if the structure is open, plus water extraction, because a fire almost always comes with water from suppression.
• Soot removal — dry methods first on most surfaces; wet cleaning applied after, in the right order.
• Contents — cleaned on site or taken off-site, with an inventory. Textiles, electronics and documents each go a different route.
• Odour — the last and hardest part. Thermal fogging and hydroxyl or ozone treatment where appropriate. Sealing a surface without deodorising it first just traps the smell.

Insurance and the inventory

Fire claims turn on documentation more than any other kind. We inventory and photograph contents as we go, log what was salvageable and what wasn't, and work with your adjuster directly. Keep your own record too — the number of items in an average home is larger than anyone expects while trying to remember them later.