Cleaning computers after fire

[Rob Lembree]

On Dec 20, 2004, at 1:25 PM, 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.

Hi Greg,

	Unfortunately I do have experience with this sort of thing, my house 
burned down in
1997 -- we lost everything.  You've gotten some great advice from 
others.  They're right in
that smoke residue his very acidic, it will burn through IC pins 
quickly.  Also, heat can damage
drive bearings.

	First, buy new disks and at least one new computer.  Insert the disks 
one at a time
with old drives, and 'dd' them.  Don't mount or anything, just 'dd'.  
Use a block size that
will maximize the performance.  When you turn the machine on, boot into 
single user mode,
and do the 'dd' immediately (but do the dd carefully!!)

	After you've done this, remove the new drives with the 'dd' data and 
put them on a shelf.
You can then try fancier things, such as carefully moving data from the 
damaged drives in
a more organized fashion.

	While you might not be so lucky, I have drives that were heavily 
damaged that worked
for a couple of years after the fire.  I ended up throwing them away 
because the became
obsolete!

	As for boards and stuff, best to replace them, but what worked for me 
was a bath of
rubbing alcohol and a toothbrush.  Immerse the boards, brush with the 
toothbrush, and
dry with a hair dryer on low.   Then let them sit for a day or so to 
ensure that they're
dry (they should be)   That worked for me.   The problem here is that 
you'll never get all the
smoke residue, so you'll be on borrowed time with the hardware.  But, 
you might get lucky
and have the stuff just keep working.  Some older stuff I had was fine, 
some more modern
stuff was toast (smaller pins -- and a microscope showed clearly what 
had happened)

	The cases the power supplies are toast -- just replace them.

	If you want help with them, I'm happy to help out -- and sadly, 
experienced.

r


> tia
>
> -- 
> Greg Rundlett
> CTO
> Knowledge Institute
>
> Free Resources for your Business
> www.BUZGate.org www.BUZWorks.org www.NHVBI.org
> (603) 642-4720 #3
> greg at buzgate.org
>
>
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>
--
Rob Lembree
Advanced Technology Group
SavaJe Technologies, Inc.

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