Visiting the site of your home and documenting in a full-scope report with images the details of the destruction caused, weather your home was a complete or partial loss.

We are happy to consult and teach clients who wish to excavate their sites on their own. We can help map and strategize paths in and out of the footprint to remain in compliance with state and federal regulations to protect you from potential funding losses for Phase II debris removal and cleanup.

Our most frequently used service. We work with you to identify key areas of the home in which items would be most likely to survive, and/or where items most valuable to you would be located. Using site images, mapping and, as possible, visit the site for an initial inspection (can be done day of). We will begin by determining the best routes in and out of the house to remain in compliance with state and federal regulations to protect your site from potential funding losses for Phase II debris removal and cleanup, then work on locating, flagging, and finally excavating those key areas of your home for your surviving items.

Once complete, your items will be handed directly to you, or follow a chain of custody to be repatriated back to you. A site report will be completed and further support documentation can be provided as needed for insurance.

Please note: clients 18+ are welcome on site to oversee, or work with us. If you do not wish, or cannot be present at the time of excavations, we understand and will work to keep you notified throughout the process of what we are recovering.

Your time, and your money is exceptionally valuable and we usually recommend our clients opt in to the Partial Excavation Service to reduce cost to you and keep time slots available for other victims. For instance, we may chose to only excavate the master bedroom, hall closet, and dining room, knowing that the garage and bathrooms did not contain valuables.

In some instances, however, multi-story collapses can require a more expansive excavation. If we believe this would be the case for your home, we will review the floor plans, flag areas of highest priority, review the fall patterns of the building, and consult continuously with you as we work through the footprint of the house. There may be areas that are less accessible, or areas (such as entryways) that we do not immediately identify patterns of surviving items in, and will move away from to focus on other areas.

We are able to excavate outbuildings, including garages, barns, sheds, shipping containers, etc., provided the buildings, if standing, have not been red-tagged as unsafe or bordering collapse. Any outbuildings containing large amounts of chemical compounds, including paints, aerosols, gasses, asbestos, led or items such as heavy machinery, weakened flooring, or unsafe air conditions must be cleared by the overseeing Phase I agency.

Outbuildings less than 120 sq/ft that have not been checked by Phase I agencies may be excavated on a case-by-case basis, as we determine it safe to do so.

Losses in homes often include urns of family members, including pets. The ashes within these urns are referred to as “cremains” and can often be recovered by specialists. If you are in need of these services, we are happy to refer you to non-profit organizations that do this work FREE OF CHARGE, and with incredible success.

If these organizations are unable to provide this service to your area, we are happy to visit your site to try to locate them. We are NOT professionals in the same way, and make no promises, however we have worked in cremains recovery and will make every effort possible to reunite you with your loved ones.

We are also happy to offer our best services to locate remains of pets that did not survive the fire. Our “Barkaeologist,” Dutch, is currently training and finding great success in locating the remains of pets, so our archaeologists and carefully and respectfully remove them from the site. We will work with you during every step of this process, and in many instances, will relieve the chain of custody agreement to keep your pet in our custody until we can securely hand them back to you.