Cleaning computers after fire

Jared Watkins jared at watkins.net
Mon Dec 20 13:59:00 EST 2004


Greg Rundlett wrote:

> We had a fire at the house where I work over the weekend...that's the 
> bad news.
>
> The good news is that the house didn't burn down and all the computers 
> seem fine (even though the vinyl blinds right above where my computers 
> are located are melted).  There is heavy smoke damage to the entire 
> house, and heat at the ceiling was at least 900 degrees in some parts 
> of the house.
>
> I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with cleaning a motherboard 
> / PC internals after a fire.  I am sure that the chemicals/acid/soot 
> in the smoke could cause problems over time and so the equipment 
> should be cleaned as thoroughly as possible.  I'm running commodity 
> desktop systems, so it may be cheaper to just buy new ones and migrate 
> the data and applications.  But then again, we've got at least 5 PC's 
> to deal with, so buying 5 new PC's, then migrating everything would be 
> expensive and time-consuming.
>
> tia
>
If they all still work you should count yourself lucky...  I wouldn't 
take any chances though if your work depends on them...  Your insurance 
should cover replacement cost... and once you have the new drives you 
could always use DD or something similar to copy the old ones bit for 
bit...  If it were me.. I'd consider all that equipment on borrowed time 
and get this done ASAP... you just don't know what those things were 
subjected to.. or how much longer they will last.  I've used knoppix for 
this task before...  add the old drives to the new systems.. then boot 
knoppix and use DD to transfer the drive contents over.  I assume the 
firemen were also in there spraying water all over everything...  that 
makes for a nice chemical mess and will surely eat away at the boards... 
and the heat and water don't do much for mechanical systems either.

Jared




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