IICRC CertifiedCert #70268689, S700 & S740 fire standards
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Fire damage restoration in Boston, often searched as fire damage repair, is the work of securing the structure, removing smoke and soot residue, neutralizing odor at its source, and rebuilding what the fire and the firefight destroyed. Done to the ANSI/IICRC S700 standard, it begins within hours of the fire being declared out. That urgency is not sales talk. Soot is chemically active, and it keeps damaging the house long after the flames are gone.
Here is the chemistry in plain terms. Burning plastics, foams, and treated wood release sulfur and chloride compounds that ride on soot particles. Combined with ordinary indoor humidity, those compounds form weak acids on every surface they touch. Within minutes to hours, plastics and marble begin to yellow and stain. Within hours to days, that acidic residue tarnishes and pits brass, copper, aluminum, and chrome. Within days to weeks, it permanently etches glass and window finishes. Ansy Chevalier puts it this way: “A fire has two clocks. The flames are out in an hour. The soot keeps working for weeks, and it does not take weekends off.”
The scale of the problem is national, but the causes hit close to home. Most fire damage in Boston and nearby areas in the South Shore of MA that we are called to starts in a kitchen or at a heating appliance, which is why our fire damage restoration services start with the source before the surfaces. According to the NFPA, cooking is the leading cause of home fires in the United States, involved in roughly half of them, and heating equipment fires peak in December, January, and February, exactly when Boston triple-deckers and South Shore capes are running hardest. Consequently, our kitchen fire cleanup crews see the same story week after week: a contained stovetop flare that never spread, yet coated three rooms in greasy protein residue.
Speed is therefore the entire game. Studio 24 Restoration Group answers the phone 24 hours a day, dispatches emergency fire damage cleanup crews across Boston and the South Shore within the hour in most cases, and starts corrosion mitigation on at-risk metals, stone, and glass on the first visit, before the adjuster has even scheduled a walkthrough.
The fire department just left? Do not wipe soot off walls, and do not run the furnace or central air, because both grind residue deeper and spread it to clean rooms. Ventilate if it is safe, then call (781) 390-9855 and ask for a fire damage contractor. A board-up and stabilization crew is typically moving within the hour.
Why soot is an emergency: per the IICRC S700 standard, acidic soot residue starts staining plastics within hours and can permanently etch glass and metal finishes within days. Early pre-cleaning of at-risk surfaces is the cheapest work on the whole job.
Every professional fire job starts by identifying the residue, because the residue dictates the cleaning method. The ANSI/IICRC S700 standard for fire and smoke damage restoration, together with S740 for contents, requires testing surfaces before cleaning them. Wipe a wet-smoke wall with the wrong product and you set the stain permanently. These are the four residues we test for on every Boston loss.
| Residue type | Typical source | Surfaces hit hardest | Cleaning approach per S700/S740 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wet smoke | Slow, smoldering, low-heat fires burning plastics and synthetics | Walls, ceilings, upholstery; smears when touched | Degreasing agents and controlled wet cleaning after testing; never dry-wiped first |
| Dry smoke | Fast, high-heat fires burning wood and paper | Flat paint, plaster, masonry; fine and powdery | Chem sponge dry cleaning and HEPA vacuuming before any liquid touches the surface |
| Protein residue | Kitchen fires, burned food, grease flare-ups | Cabinets, painted finishes, everything with an odor path; nearly invisible film | Enzyme and degreasing wet cleaning, sealing where needed, thermal fogging for odor |
| Fuel oil soot (puff-back) | Oil furnace or boiler misfire blowing unburned fuel through the system | Every room served by the ductwork; sticky black webs in corners | Specialty degreasers, full HVAC cleaning, and careful lifting so the oily residue never smears |
The distinctions matter to your wallet as much as your walls. Dry smoke on plaster often cleans beautifully, while wet smoke on flat ceiling paint frequently means sealing and repainting instead. Our soot removal technicians test, document the residue type room by room, and put that classification straight into the claim scope so nothing gets argued about later.
Dry sponge cleaning lifts soot from plaster without driving it deeper.
Fire is a named peril on essentially every Massachusetts homeowner policy, and the coverage is broader than most people expect. It typically includes the burn damage itself, smoke and soot damage throughout the house, the water the fire department put through your roof, damaged contents, and additional living expenses if the home is unlivable during the work. What actually gets paid, however, comes down to documentation, and that is where we earn our keep.
Studio 24 was founded by Ansy Chevalier, an IICRC certified restorer (cert #70268689) who writes fire scopes in Xactimate, the same platform your carrier uses, and stands next to you at the adjuster meeting. Choosing a fire damage company in Boston that writes in the carrier’s own estimating format removes a round of translation before it starts. We photograph every room, log residue tests, inventory contents piece by piece, and track your hotel and meal receipts for the additional living expense claim. The same documentation-first approach earned us the #1 water damage restoration ranking in Boston from Business Rate. The full playbook, from deductible to final payment, is on our insurance claims help page.
One more thing homeowners rarely hear. In Massachusetts you choose your own restoration contractor, not your carrier. We work with every insurer, but we work for you.
“Go with the insurance company’s preferred fire vendor. It is faster and they already know the process.”
Preferred vendors operate inside carrier pricing programs, and their scope is reviewed by the party paying the bill. An independent, documented scope built from residue testing and a room-by-room inventory is what captures the smoke damage in rooms the fire never touched. Document first, then file with evidence.
A fire loss runs in a strict order, because each phase protects the next. Board-up before assessment, residue testing before cleaning, soot removal before deodorization, and odor clearance before a single sheet of new drywall goes up. Skip a step and the smell comes back through fresh paint six weeks later. That sequencing is the core of the S700 standard, and it is why our crews resist the urge to start scrubbing on day one.
Just as important, mitigation and fire damage repair live under one roof here. The crew that cleans the soot hands the job to our own reconstruction team for framing, drywall, cabinets, and finish work, on the same claim and the same schedule. On top of that, because firefighting typically leaves hundreds or thousands of gallons of water in the structure, our drying equipment arrives with the fire crew, not on a separate work order from a separate company.
Photos, residue logs, and scope updates go to you and your adjuster daily, so there are no surprises at the supplement stage.
Inventorying and packing household belongings for off-site cleaning.
What Rolls Off the Truck on a Fire Loss
Smoke damage is a chemistry problem, so every machine on the truck answers a specific chemical question: how to capture airborne particulate, how to break odor molecules apart, and how to lift residue without driving it deeper. The choice between technologies often comes down to whether your family is still living in the house. Here is the fire lineup and what each piece does. When odor is the main complaint, our smoke odor removal specialists build the treatment plan around occupancy first.
Negative air machines with HEPA and activated carbon stages capture the fine soot particulate that irritates lungs and keeps resettling on cleaned surfaces. They run from hour one to the final walkthrough.
UV-activated hydroxyl radicals break smoke odor molecules apart at the molecular level and are safe to run while the home is occupied. Slower than ozone, but nobody has to move out.
For unoccupied structures, ozone oxidizes odor compounds faster than any other method. The space is sealed, treated, and fully aired out before anyone, including pets, returns.
Heat turns deodorizing agent into a smoke-sized fog that follows the exact paths the original smoke traveled, into wall cavities, closets, and framing gaps that wipe-downs never reach.
Vulcanized rubber dry cleaning sponges lift dry soot off plaster, flat paint, and books without liquid. On dry smoke residue, this humble tool saves more finishes than any machine on the truck.
High-frequency cavitation scrubs soot from dishware, fixtures, blinds, and keepsakes at a microscopic level, restoring items that hand cleaning would write off as total losses.
One Team, the Whole Fire Loss
Whole-house residue removal for smoke that traveled far beyond the burn room, tested and treated surface by surface.
Residue-matched cleaning that stops acidic soot before it permanently etches metal, stone, and glass.
Source removal first, then hydroxyl, ozone, and thermal fogging until the smell is gone, not masked.
Inventory, pack-out, ultrasonic and specialty cleaning, and climate-controlled storage until the rebuild is done.
Protein residue from cooking fires and the wiring investigations that follow electrical events in older homes.
Creosote flue fires in older masonry, from cracked tiles and smoke intrusion to the masonry repairs that follow.
Each of these runs as its own specialty with its own page. Start with smoke damage cleanup in Boston when the residue spread past the burn room, or go straight to contents cleaning and pack-out when furniture, clothing, and keepsakes took the worst of it. Business owners, landlords, and property managers with a loss in an occupied building should head to commercial fire damage restoration, where business interruption math changes the entire timeline.
Fire behaves differently in a 1905 triple-decker than in a 2005 colonial, and fire damage contractors in Boston who work these streets need to know why. Balloon framing, standard in Boston housing built before the 1930s, runs open stud cavities from the sill straight to the attic with no fire blocking. Flame and smoke use those cavities like chimneys, which is how a second-floor fire in Dorchester fills a shared attic in minutes and pushes smoke into a third-floor unit whose door was never opened. In triple-deckers we scope all three units by default, because the smoke almost never respects the lease lines.
The wiring tells its own story. Much of the pre-war stock in Roxbury, Hyde Park, and Roslindale still carries knob-and-tube circuits behind the plaster, and insulation blown over those old conductors is a documented ignition risk. After any wiring event, our electrical fire damage crews coordinate with licensed electricians so the cause is corrected, not just cleaned around. Meanwhile, the 1920s brick and masonry chimneys across the South Shore collect creosote season after season, and a flue fire can crack clay tile liners without any visible damage from the living room. Our chimney fire repair work starts with a camera down the flue for exactly that reason.
Then there is heating season itself. Space heaters come out in Brockton and Randolph the first cold week of November, and every January cold snap brings a run of bedroom and garage fires that start within three feet of one. The South Shore adds a signature loss of its own: the oil furnace puff-back. A delayed ignition in an aging burner blows unburned fuel oil soot through the ductwork, and a homeowner wakes up to greasy black film on every horizontal surface in the house with no fire at all. Different causes, different residues, and consequently different cleaning plans, which is the entire argument for hiring locally.
Pattern Recognition, Season by Season
After enough fire damage cleanup in Boston and across the South Shore, losses sort themselves into patterns tied to the calendar and the housing stock. We stage equipment for these three before their seasons arrive.
The pattern: a cold snap, a heater too close to bedding or a couch, and a fast fire with heavy dry smoke through the bedroom level.
How it resolves: board-up the same night, chem sponge and HEPA work through the affected floor, hydroxyl deodorization while the family stays in place, and a rebuild scoped on one claim.
The pattern: an oil furnace misfires in a Weymouth or Marshfield colonial and coats the whole house in sticky fuel oil soot through the ducts, with no flame anywhere.
How it resolves: full HVAC cleaning, specialty degreasing room by room, contents wiped or packed out, and a covered claim most homeowners did not know they had.
The pattern: fire or smoke reaches the shared attic of a Dorchester or Mattapan three-family, and all three units smell it within the hour thanks to balloon framing.
How it resolves: all three units tested and scoped, smoke sealed at the cavity level, coordination across the owner and tenant claims so no unit falls through the cracks.
★★★★★
“We had fire damage in our attic and thought the whole thing would be a nightmare. Ansy and his team showed up the next morning, walked us through everything, and got us approved for full restoration. True pros.”
Mark T., Mattapan MA
★★★★★
“From start to finish, Studio 24 handled everything. My roof and gutters were destroyed after a storm, and they worked directly with my adjuster to make sure nothing was missed. 10/10 service.”
James E., Randolph MA
★★★★★
“Fast, efficient, and reliable. They showed genuine care for our home, handled the cleanup perfectly, and coordinated everything with the insurance company.”
Anthony B., Greater Boston
Searching fire damage restoration near me at two in the morning, what matters is which company actually stages crews on your side of the harbor. Ours run out of the Blue Hills corridor, which puts Boston’s neighborhoods and the Route 3 and Route 24 towns inside the response window that soot chemistry demands. Just as important: we keep dedicated pages for the towns we serve most, including fire damage restoration in Quincy and smoke and fire cleanup in Brockton, with the full coverage list here.
Asked in the First Call After a Fire
Usually not on the first night. Even a small kitchen fire loads the air with fine particulate and acidic soot that irritate lungs, and protein residue keeps releasing odor for days. Wait until the space has been assessed, ventilated, and scrubbed with HEPA filtration. Our free inspection tells you exactly what is safe and when.
In most cases, yes. Your own homeowner or condo policy typically covers smoke and soot damage to your unit and contents even when the fire started next door, and the carriers sort out reimbursement between themselves afterward. We document your unit separately, room by room, so your claim stands on its own evidence.
A puff-back is a misfire in an oil furnace or boiler that blows unburned fuel oil soot through the heating system and into the living space. Most Massachusetts homeowner policies treat it as a sudden and accidental covered loss. The residue is oily, sticky, and travels through ductwork, so professional cleaning is the standard response.
Most structures and many contents can be deodorized rather than replaced. Effective odor control removes the soot source first, then neutralizes what remains with hydroxyl or ozone treatment and thermal fogging. Items that still hold odor after proper cleaning, such as some mattresses and particleboard furniture, get documented for replacement in the claim instead.
Hours for some surfaces, weeks for others. Acidic soot begins discoloring plastics and marble almost immediately, tarnishes and pits metals within hours to days, and can permanently etch glass within weeks. That is why we pre-clean at-risk surfaces on the first visit and treat soot as an active emergency rather than a cleanup that waits.
Both, under one roof. Studio 24 handles emergency board-up, smoke and soot cleanup, odor removal, contents restoration, and the full reconstruction with our own build team, all on the same claim. You never have to find a second contractor to finish what the first one opened, and nothing falls between them.
The same fire and smoke crews cover the Route 24 and 138 corridors: Stoughton, Canton, and Randolph are among the towns our board-up teams reach inside the hour.
Electric vehicles brought a new fire type to Boston garages: see EV charger fire damage restoration for lithium-ion battery and charging equipment losses.
One more thing worth saying plainly. Almost every serious fire loss is also a water loss, because suppression can put thousands of gallons through the roof and floors in an hour. That water soaks framing and plaster exactly like a burst pipe would, and it starts the same 24 to 48 hour mold clock. Therefore our fire crews arrive with extraction and drying gear, and when the water side of the loss is the bigger problem, our water damage restoration team runs it as a parallel scope on the same claim. One company, one document trail, one rebuild. Last updated August 2026.
Free inspection, board-up today, direct insurance billing, and one certified team from the first tarp to the last coat of paint.