NYS and NYC M/WBE Certified Contractor
Most East Hills homes were built between 1946 and 1970 — Canterbury Woods, Strathmore, Norgate, Lakeville Estates. That era of construction means your walls, floors, and mechanical systems carry decades of character. It also means a fire doesn’t just leave soot behind. It can disturb asbestos-containing floor tiles, lead-based paint, and aging oil heat infrastructure all at once. When that happens, you need a company that can legally and competently handle all of it — not one that stops work when the scope gets complicated.
The real outcome of proper fire restoration isn’t just a clean house. It’s a home that holds its value, passes future inspections, and doesn’t carry hidden damage that surfaces six months later. For a home worth $1 million or more in East Hills, the cost of a rushed or incomplete restoration isn’t just inconvenience — it’s a financial risk that follows you to every future appraisal and sale.
There’s also the water. When Roslyn Highlands Fire Company responds to a fire on your street, they bring thousands of gallons of water with them. That moisture soaks into drywall, subfloor, and framing — and mold can start forming within 24 to 48 hours. A restoration process that doesn’t address water extraction and structural drying alongside smoke and soot cleanup is leaving half the job undone.
We’re a Long Island-based, IICRC-certified restoration and environmental services company with over 5,000 completed projects across New York State. We hold a Nassau County General Contractor license, which means we don’t stop at cleanup — we can legally rebuild what the fire destroyed. Most restoration companies serving East Hills can’t say that. When reconstruction is needed, they hand you off to a separate contractor, and suddenly you’re managing two companies, two timelines, and two sets of accountability.
We also hold NYS DOL Asbestos and Mold licenses and USEPA Lead/RRP certification. For the pre-1980 homes that make up the majority of East Hills’s housing stock — from the Levitt-built Strathmore neighborhood to the larger Colonials in Country Estates — those credentials aren’t optional. They’re legally required to do the job right. We’re available 24/7/365, and we bill insurance directly so you’re not carrying the administrative weight of a major claim on top of everything else.
The first call triggers an emergency response. East Hills is accessible via I-495 at Exit 38 or 39 and Northern Boulevard — and our goal is on-site within one hour of your call. That window matters because acidic soot begins permanently bonding to surfaces, etching metal fixtures, and corroding appliances within hours of a fire being extinguished. Fast arrival isn’t a selling point — it’s damage control.
Once on-site, we assess the full scope before anything else. That means identifying structural compromise, documenting everything to insurance-standard specifications, and flagging any hazardous materials — asbestos, lead paint, or mold risk — before work begins. In East Hills, where most homes were built before 1978, that assessment step is almost always relevant. If the Nassau County Fire Marshal has been involved, as is standard procedure for fires in this area, we coordinate with that documentation as part of the claim file.
From there, the process moves through water extraction and structural drying, soot and smoke removal, odor elimination, hazardous material abatement if needed, and then reconstruction. Because we hold a Nassau County GC license, permits for structural work are pulled under our license — you don’t need to find a separate contractor or manage a second permit process through the Village of East Hills’s Building Department. The same company that started the job finishes it.
Ready to get started?
East Hills isn’t a one-size-fits-all market, and fire restoration here reflects that. The village’s predominantly oil-heated homes create a specific and common scenario that most homeowners don’t anticipate: oil burner puff-backs. When an oil furnace misfires, it can blow fine, oily soot through every duct and room in the house without an actual structural fire. The result looks like a fire happened — black soot coating walls, ceilings, and HVAC systems throughout the entire home. Our NADCA-certified HVAC cleaning capability handles exactly this, and it’s a service that comes up regularly in Nassau County’s older housing stock.
For structural fire events, our scope covers emergency board-up and stabilization, full water extraction and drying, soot removal from all surfaces and systems, smoke odor elimination using thermal fogging and hydroxyl technology, asbestos and lead abatement where required by law, mold prevention and remediation, and complete structural reconstruction. That last piece — reconstruction — is where most restoration companies in this market stop. We don’t. Our Nassau County General Contractor license covers framing, drywall, flooring, cabinetry, and full finish work, so your home is restored to its pre-fire condition, not just cleaned up and left half-finished.
We also work directly with your insurance carrier from day one, documenting scope, materials, and labor to the standard adjusters require — and we’ve helped Nassau County homeowners recover the full value of their claims rather than settling for what the first estimate offered.
In most cases, yes — standard homeowner’s insurance policies cover fire damage restoration, including cleanup, smoke and soot removal, water damage from firefighting, and structural repairs. What varies is how thoroughly the claim is documented and whether the full scope of damage is captured in the initial assessment.
For East Hills homeowners with high-value policies on homes worth $1 million or more, the difference between a well-documented claim and a rushed one can be significant — sometimes tens of thousands of dollars. Insurance adjusters work from what’s documented, not from what you remember. We document every phase of the restoration to insurance-standard specifications, bill carriers directly, and have helped Nassau County homeowners recover the full value of their claims rather than accepting the first number an adjuster puts forward. If your home in Lakeville Estates or Canterbury Woods has sustained fire damage, the claims process is something we navigate with you, not something you handle alone after we leave.
Faster than most people expect. Acidic soot begins chemically bonding to walls, ceilings, metal fixtures, and appliances within the first few hours after a fire is extinguished. Within 24 to 48 hours, porous surfaces like drywall and wood can absorb smoke odor deeply enough that surface cleaning alone won’t remove it. Within a week, many of those surfaces require full replacement rather than restoration.
This is why the first response matters as much as the restoration itself. Every hour between the fire being put out and a certified crew beginning mitigation increases the scope — and the cost — of what needs to be done. We’re available 24/7 and staged to reach East Hills within one hour of your call, using I-495 or Northern Boulevard depending on where you are in the village. Getting there fast isn’t about urgency for its own sake — it’s about preserving as much of your home as possible before damage becomes permanent.
It does, and it’s one of the most important questions to ask before any restoration work begins. Homes built before 1980 commonly contain asbestos-containing materials — vinyl floor tiles, pipe insulation, ceiling tiles, and joint compound were all standard in 1950s and 1960s construction. Homes built before 1978 also frequently contain lead-based paint. A fire can disturb both, and under New York State law, only a contractor holding a NYS DOL Asbestos License can legally perform abatement. USEPA Lead/RRP certification is separately required for renovation work in pre-1978 homes.
If a restoration company without those credentials begins work on your East Hills home and encounters asbestos or lead during demolition, they are legally required to stop. That work stoppage extends your displacement, complicates your insurance claim, and leaves your home in a partially opened state while you find a qualified contractor. We hold both licenses, which means the project doesn’t stop when the scope expands — it continues under the same crew, the same contract, and the same timeline.
The honest answer is that it depends heavily on the scope — how much of the home was affected, whether structural damage is involved, and whether hazardous materials like asbestos or lead need to be abated. Nationally, fire damage restoration averages between $12,900 and $27,000, but that range reflects a wide variety of home sizes and damage levels. For a large Colonial or Tudor-style home in East Hills — where square footage, custom finishes, and aging construction materials all factor in — the scope and cost can be higher.
What matters most is that the estimate captures everything. A low initial number that doesn’t account for hidden smoke penetration, water damage from suppression, or the cost of asbestos abatement in a pre-1980 home isn’t a deal — it’s an incomplete picture that creates problems later. We provide thorough, documented assessments that reflect the real scope of work, and we work directly with your insurance carrier to make sure the claim covers what the restoration actually requires. You shouldn’t be paying out of pocket for damage your policy was written to cover.
A puff-back happens when an oil-fired furnace misfires and releases a pressurized burst of unburned fuel and soot back through the system. That soot travels through your ductwork and into every room in the house — coating walls, ceilings, furniture, and personal belongings with a fine, oily film. It looks like a fire happened without any flames, and the cleanup is just as involved.
Long Island has one of the highest concentrations of oil-heated homes in the country, and East Hills’s post-war housing stock is heavily oil-dependent. Puff-backs are a common, recurring issue here — and most standard homeowner’s insurance policies in Nassau County do cover them as a sudden and accidental event. The key is documenting the damage thoroughly before any cleaning begins, which is exactly how we approach these jobs. We handle both the HVAC duct cleaning and the surface restoration, so you’re not coordinating two separate contractors to clean up one incident.
For a contained fire — a kitchen or garage incident with limited structural damage — cleanup and restoration typically takes one to two weeks. For a fire with significant structural involvement, the timeline extends to four to eight weeks or longer, depending on the scope of reconstruction, permit processing through the Village of East Hills’s Building Department, and whether hazardous material abatement is required.
The biggest variable most homeowners don’t anticipate is the permit process. As an incorporated village, East Hills has its own building administration, and structural reconstruction requires permits pulled at the village level. A contractor who isn’t familiar with that process — or who isn’t licensed to pull Nassau County GC permits — can add weeks to your timeline through administrative delays alone. We hold the Nassau County General Contractor license required to pull those permits directly, which keeps the project moving rather than stalling at the reconstruction phase while you’re still displaced from your home.
Local Resources
Useful Links
