Cleaning computers after fire

L.B. MCCULLEY bmcculley at rcn.com
Mon Dec 20 16:19:01 EST 2004


I would second Jared's suggestion that you view the equipment 
exposed to unknown hazards during the fire and firefighting 
as being on borrowed time.  However, practical concerns may 
motivate some compromises.  

Incidentally, I once faced similar considerations when I was 
called in to resurrect a system that had been flooded by 
plumbing problems on the floor above.  In that situation the 
primary system user wanted to return it to use, I prevailed 
in replacing it on the argument that insurance coverage was 
available at the time of the incident but might not be 
honored months later when intermittant problems would 
manifest - you should think about that too!

One very important question, were the systems running (and if 
so, active or idle) or powered down at the time of the fire?  
My flooded system had been running, but idle, when flooded 
and booted ok after being dried out.  Everyone agreed that it 
would be unreliable for long-term future use, especially 
having been powered when flooded.  Your smoke and chemical 
exposure might be less significant if fans and drives were 
not running at the time, although not as greatly different as 
water soaking.

First questions I would consider or research are, as Jared 
suggested, insurance coverage.  Another relevent detail would 
be whether the systems were used for business or purely 
personal use.  That might also affect what insurance coverage 
would be available.

I'd also consider the possibility of trying to keep at least 
some systems in use if there was no insurance coverage, and 
my consideration would differ depending on whether the usage 
was business or not.  Basically, if the usage is personal and 
more hobbyist than personal management, I would accept 
greater risk and less expense.  For a business use I would 
tend to reject risk and accept expense to do so.  YMMV.

A couple of practical points to consider.  One, in making any 
decisions about replacing now versus later, it might be 
useful to inspect the units very carefully, both externally 
and internally.  Whether they were running would be a 
consideration here too.

In the event it was decided to attempt to keep any of the 
systems in use, I would certainly completely disassemble and 
clean throughly, I believe that simply washing throughly with 
deionized or distilled water would be safest.  Alcohol might 
be acceptable also, I am not as confident about that but 
would consider trying it for my own system if it looked like 
something stronger than pure H2O was indicated.  Dry *very* 
thoroughly before reassembling.  Most likely problem area 
will be internal to power supply, which will also be 
inaccessible for cleaning, so it might be wise to stock a 
spare.  Monitors would be a similar concern.

I would also strongly consider acquiring one new system with 
a very large hard drive and mirroring all the compromised 
systems onto that drive routinely.  Definitely run backups 
before starting to do anything else!!!!!

Good luck!

-Bruce McCulley
Certified Information Systems Security Professional


---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 13:57:56 -0500
>From: Jared Watkins <jared at watkins.net>  
>Subject: Re: Cleaning computers after fire  
>To: gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
>Cc: Greg Rundlett <greg at buzgate.org>
>
>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
>
>_______________________________________________
>gnhlug-discuss mailing list
>gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
>http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss



More information about the gnhlug-discuss mailing list