Cleanup, sanitising and drying after river water or ice-jam backwater reaches a cellar or a ground floor.
Fastest: call (833) 490-5225. Or send this and we call you back.
River flooding puts outside water, silt and whatever it carried into a building, so it is handled as contaminated rather than clean. The work is pumping out, removing porous materials, cleaning hard surfaces and drying the structure with logged readings. Phones here are answered 24/7 for homes across Worcester County.
River water is the one kind of flooding where what the water brought matters as much as the water. A cellar filled from a swollen river holds silt, road runoff, fuel and farm and yard washings, so the materials it touched are not treated the same way as a clean burst-pipe flood even when it looks no dirtier.
Ice jams add a second mechanism in winter. Broken ice moving downstream grounds at a bend, a shallow or a bridge pier and builds into a plug, and the water behind it rises fast and in a place nobody expects, sometimes on a clear cold day with no rain in the forecast. The release can be just as abrupt.
If water is rising towards a building, people come before property: get out of a cellar, leave the panel alone if you cannot reach it dry, and do not drive into water across a road. Call once you are somewhere safe and a crew is sent as soon as one is free; the useful first job is photographs of the water at its height.
Never enter a cellar that is filling or still rising, and do not re-enter a flooded building until the power to it has been dealt with: water standing against a panel, a pump or an appliance should be assumed energised. Do not drive or walk through water running across a road, where depth and a washed-out surface are impossible to judge. Keep off river ice and away from ice piled at a bridge or bank, since a jam can release without warning. Wear boots and gloves for flood water, wash thoroughly afterwards, and do not let anyone eat or drink anything the water touched. Leave a submerged furnace, boiler or well pump for the relevant technician.
The Millers River drains northern Worcester County and gathers the melt and rain of a wide upland. Its documented floods at Athol came in November 1927 with a tropical storm, in March 1936 with the spring melt, and in September 1938 with a hurricane; a local history account describes Main Street turning into a river in 1938 and the Baptist church spire collapsing.
An ice jam raises water upstream of the plug rather than at the heaviest rain, and it does it quickly. On the Millers River, ice-jam flooding near Athol's Exchange Street bridge has led to the evacuation of an elderly-housing complex, according to a local television report. Houses that have never taken river water can be affected by a jam in a new place.
Not every river problem is the main channel. Brooks, ditches and culverts carry extraordinary volumes in a cloudburst and overtop where they are constricted, which damages roads, crossings and whatever sits downhill. A local television report described a state of emergency declared in Orange after a past record-rain event damaged roads and dams.
A crew is dispatched as fast as one is available, and you approve the estimate before any work starts.
The Millers River is the main one. It drains northern Worcester County and runs through the centres of Winchendon, Athol and Orange, with a documented flood history at Athol. The Otter River, about ten miles long, flows through Templeton and is a major tributary of the Millers.
The Otter River once powered a woolen mill, a paper mill and a brickyard in Otter River village, which is why there are buildings close to the water in the first place; a mill needed the drop, so the village was built where the river was. Its own flood history has not been documented in anything we can cite, so we do not make claims about it.
The flood-control works came after the big floods, not before them. The Birch Hill and Tully Lake dams were built following the 1927, 1936 and 1938 events for flood control, which is the single most important thing to know about the basin: the river that flooded Athol's Main Street is a managed river now.
Moving ice grounds on a shallow, a bend or a bridge pier and piles into a plug across the channel. The river backs up behind it and spreads over ground that is not usually wet, sometimes within an hour and on a day with no precipitation at all. When the plug lets go the water drops just as fast.
Two things make the winter version harder. The flooding happens where the ice stopped rather than where the river normally rises, so local experience is a poor guide, and everything is freezing, which means a wet cellar is also a freezing cellar once the power or heat is affected.
The response is the same as any outside-water event, with an added worry about the heating plant. If the furnace, boiler or water heater went under, it is left alone for a technician. Power outage and ice storm water damage covers a house that is wet and cold at the same time.
Yes. Water that has crossed roads, yards and ground before entering the building is handled as grossly contaminated regardless of how clear it looks, because it carries silt, sewage from any source it passed, fuel and whatever was stored where it ran. That decides what is removed rather than cleaned.
In practice that means porous materials come out: carpet and pad, soft insulation, cardboard, particleboard, upholstery, paper and wet drywall above the line the water reached. Hard, non-porous surfaces are washed, cleaned with an antimicrobial product and dried in place, which is most of an old cellar.
Food, medicines and anything stored on the floor that touched the water are discarded, not rinsed. Sewer and septic backup cleanup describes the same category of water arriving from the other direction, and uses the same removal rules.
Generally not. Massachusetts homeowner policies typically exclude flood, meaning the rise of surface water, and cover it only where separate flood coverage has been bought; sewer backup and sump-pump failure also usually need their own endorsement. The policy and the insurer decide, and the crew cannot.
That is a conversation to have with an agent long before a high-water season, because flood coverage cannot be added once the river is up and the distinction between a flood and a covered sudden event comes down to the wording in your own policy.
If a claim is denied and you think it was mishandled, the Massachusetts Division of Insurance Consumer Service Unit takes complaints, though it cannot decide the cause of a loss; readers in the New Hampshire towns we serve go to the New Hampshire Insurance Department. The claims guide explains what to keep.
Hard materials and solid wood, usually. Stone, brick, block and concrete clean up and dry, as do solid-wood framing, posts and stair stringers. What is normally lost is everything porous the water sat in, plus any appliance, furnace or pump that went under and has to be assessed by its own trade.
The decisions get easier if the high-water line is recorded before anything is moved, because removal above that line is a judgement and below it generally is not. Keep an inventory and photographs of what is discarded as you go, since that list is the part of a claim people regret not making.
Mechanical equipment is nobody's guess. A submerged burner, a well pump or a pressure tank is checked by the trade that owns it, and flooded well and private system cleanup covers water supply that has been under flood water.
Nothing starts while water is still rising or while a cellar may have live circuits in it. The technician works out what can be isolated and from where, checks whether the furnace, boiler or well pump went under, and records the high-water line before anything is moved, because that line decides where the cut lines go.
Submersible pumps take the depth down, then extraction equipment lifts the remaining water and the silt suspended in it. Where the river is still high, the crew works knowing the groundwater outside the wall may push water back in, so the first pass is about getting the building usable rather than dry.
Outside water is treated as contaminated, so porous materials that absorbed it are removed rather than cleaned: carpet and pad, soft insulation, cardboard, particleboard, upholstered furniture and wet drywall are cut out above the water line. Solid wood, stone, block and concrete are cleaned and kept.
Silt and film are washed off hard surfaces, then the surfaces are cleaned with an antimicrobial product and the air is filtered while the work goes on. Framing cavities are flushed and opened where the water reached, since silt left in a cavity holds moisture against the wood for months.
Air movers and dehumidifiers go in once the removal is finished, with readings taken on the sill, posts, joist ends, subfloor and any masonry. Photographs, the readings and the removal list go into a file for an insurer or a builder, and the crew notes what the high-water line means for the rebuild.
Baldwinville grew up around water power on the Otter River in northern Templeton, and the mill-village pattern put houses, mills and later housing close to the channel and low in the valley. The 1965 special act that created the Baldwinville-Otter River Sewer District, and the town wastewater plant on Reservoir Road that discharges to the Otter River, are both part of that same valley geography.
The towns along the Millers River have the longer flood record. Winchendon, Athol and Orange are the population centres on the river, and Athol is where the 1927, 1936 and 1938 floods are documented. Upland towns such as Royalston, Petersham and Warwick deal with brooks and culverts rather than a main channel.
We do not publish claims about which streets or cellars in Baldwinville take river water, because no such record was found and guessing about a specific address is not useful to anyone. What a crew can do is read your own building: the silt line, the foundation, the sill and the equipment. Call (833) 490-5225 once it is safe to be in the house.
Not sure if you're covered? Check your ZIP code.
Pump-out, clearing, cleaning and metered drying of flooded cellars, including stone and brick walls, dirt floors and mechanical plant.
Contained removal, disposal, cleaning and drying after a drain, sewer line or septic system pushes water back into a cellar or bathroom.
Cleanup and drying after a storm drives rain or wet snow into a roof, wall, window or cellar.
Assessment, containment and removal of mold growth that has taken hold on materials wetted by a flood or hidden leak.
The Millers River drains the snow and rain of north central Massachusetts through Athol, Winchendon and Orange, and it has flooded in several major events.
You can lift and discard what is obviously ruined once the electricity is safe, wearing boots and gloves, and photograph everything first. What is worth leaving to a crew is the structural drying, the cleaning of surfaces that stay, and the decision about cut lines in walls, because flood water above a floor usually means opening materials you cannot see into.
Mainly in what can be kept. Clean water from a supply line lets a lot of porous material be dried and saved if it is caught quickly; outside water does not, because of what it carried in. The drying half of the two jobs looks similar, but the removal and cleaning half is much larger after a river event.
That is not homeowner work and not drying work. Anything to do with ice in a river channel belongs to the public authorities who manage the river and the emergency services, and standing on or near a jam is dangerous. Report rising water to your town, get people and vehicles clear, and deal with the inside of the building afterwards.
Longer than a clean-water job. There is a removal and cleaning stage before drying can start, and masonry that has been under water for a day or more releases moisture slowly. Expect the equipment to be in for several days at least, with readings logged each visit so the finish is measured rather than assumed.
Yes, before drying. Silt holds water, holds whatever was in the water, and keeps a floor from releasing moisture to the air, so leaving it behind extends the drying and the smell. It is washed and extracted rather than swept dry, which puts fine material into the air everyone is breathing.
It should be watched for. The EPA's guidance for clean water is to dry things within 24 to 48 hours, and a flood almost never gets that, so materials that stayed wet are treated as a growth risk and the porous ones are removed for that reason. See mold after water damage for how containment and air filtration are handled.