Creek Flood Cleanup in Smyrna, GA
The creek behind the subdivision is usually a trickle you can step across. After four days of rain it came over the bank, across the back yard, through the crawl space vents, and up into the finished basement, and when it went back down it left two inches of red mud on the carpet and a brown line on the drywall at knee height. This site puts you through to an independent local provider who cleans up after creek flooding in Smyrna and across south Cobb.
What creek water leaves behind that a pipe leak does not
Water from a supply line is clean. Water from Nickajack Creek is not. It carries silt, yard fertilizer, oil off the parking lots upstream, and whatever the storm drains and any overwhelmed sewer lines put into it, and it soaks all of that into carpet, pad, drywall, insulation, and the bottom of the cabinets. The rule for flood water is that porous material it touched comes out rather than dries in place. That is the difference between this job and a burst pipe, and it is why the crew wants to know on the call where the water came from.
What the crew does when the water has gone back down
They start by making the space safe to enter: power off to the wet level, a look at the block wall and the slab for damage, and a check for gas or sewage. Then they shovel and pump the mud and standing water, cut the wet drywall and pull the carpet and pad, and bag it out through one path so it does not track through the dry part of the house. They wash and treat the slab, the block wall, and the framing, and then meter everything that stays. In a crawl space, crawl space water extraction is the first step: the water off the clay, the vapor barrier out, and the joists read from below.
Before you go back into a flooded lower level
Do not walk into standing water with the power on. Do not run the air handler if the ducts under the house were in the water. Keep kids and pets off the wet level. Photograph the water line on the walls, the mud on the floor, and anything ruined before it goes to the curb, because the adjuster and any disaster program will want to see it. Then pick up the phone and say the water came in from the yard.
What can be saved after a creek flood
The shell: the slab, the block, the framing, and usually the subfloor, once they are washed, treated, and dried. Hard furniture can often be cleaned. Carpet, pad, drywall, insulation, particleboard cabinets, and upholstered furniture that sat in creek water come out. Documents and photos can sometimes be dried by a specialist if they go into a freezer quickly. When the wet material is out and the shell is clean, structural drying runs until the framing reads dry, and only then does the rebuild start.
The creeks around Smyrna and the storms that filled them
Smyrna sits on a ridge between two creeks. Nickajack Creek rises in Marietta, runs down the southwest side of town past the Concord covered bridge, and reaches the Chattahoochee at Mableton. Rottenwood Creek drains the Cumberland side and meets the river near Interstate North Parkway. Both go under flood warnings from the National Weather Service office in Peachtree City in a wet summer, and the lots along them were built in the 1960s and 1970s before anyone worried about it much.
The week of September 15 to 22, 2009 is the one everyone in south Cobb remembers. Parts of Cobb and Douglas took more than 20 inches of rain, the Sweetwater Creek gauge near Austell recorded a crest 20 feet above flood stage, Clarkdale Elementary flooded to the roof, and houses along the Chattahoochee in Vinings took about six feet of water on the first floor. Cobb County later bought and cleared more than 75 flood-prone houses. A house near a creek that took water in 2009 sits in a floodplain that has not moved.
A homeowner policy almost never pays for water that comes in from outside; that needs a separate flood policy, and even then the adjuster decides. Nobody here has read your policy, and this site promises nothing about it. The crew's photos of the water line and the mud are the record you will need.
Calling after the creek came in
Say that the water came from outside, which level it reached, and whether it has gone back down. Mention a crawl space, a finished basement, or standing mud. Keep the property address and a number we can call back within reach. Call (770) 830-3578.
