NYS and NYC M/WBE Certified Contractor
The fire is out. The trucks are gone. And now you’re standing in a home that smells like smoke, has water soaked into the floors from the hoses, and looks nothing like where your family was living 24 hours ago. That’s the moment most people don’t know what to do next — and that uncertainty is exactly where the real damage can compound if you don’t move fast.
Here’s what actually matters in the hours and days after a fire in Hicksville: soot starts bonding permanently to surfaces within hours, and the water used to put out the fire creates mold conditions within 24 to 48 hours. In a home built in the 1950s — which describes most of the Cape Cods and ranches throughout Hicksville — that water is soaking into walls and insulation that may already contain asbestos and lead paint. Those aren’t just restoration problems. They’re legal ones, and they require a licensed contractor to handle correctly.
When the work is done right, you get your home back — not a version of it that still smells faintly of smoke six months later, or one where the insurance company underpaid because the damage wasn’t properly documented. You get a fully restored, permitted, and rebuilt property that your family can actually live in again.
We’re a locally owned restoration and environmental services company serving Hicksville, Nassau County, Suffolk County, Queens, and New York City. We’ve completed more than 5,000 restoration projects across New York State, and we hold every credential that Hicksville’s older housing stock actually demands: NYS DOL Asbestos, NYS DOL Mold, USEPA Lead/RRP, IICRC Fire and Water Damage Restoration, NADCA HVAC cleaning, and a Nassau County General Contractor license.
That last one matters more than most people realize. A lot of restoration companies can clean up after a fire, but they can’t legally pull permits and rebuild in Nassau County without a GC license. We can — which means you’re not handing your project off to a second contractor mid-stream while you’re still displaced from your home.
We know the Town of Oyster Bay permit process. We know what the Nassau County Fire Marshal’s Office documents after a fire on a street like Spindle Road or Page Drive in Hicksville. And we know what’s inside the walls of a home built in 1955, because we’ve worked in hundreds of them across this county.
The first thing that happens when you call us is someone actually picks up — 24 hours a day, every day of the year. We commit to being on-site within one hour, because in a dense community like Hicksville, where homes sit close together and aging ductwork can carry smoke contamination through an entire structure fast, the window for limiting secondary damage is narrow.
Once we’re on-site, we do a full assessment — not just of the visible burn zone, but of the entire property. That means checking for smoke migration through HVAC systems, testing for moisture levels in walls and flooring from firefighting water, and identifying any asbestos-containing materials that may have been disturbed. In a pre-1980 home, that last step is not optional. It’s required by New York State law, and it shapes the entire remediation plan before a single wall gets touched.
From there, we move through demolition of damaged materials, full remediation of soot, smoke, and water damage, HVAC cleaning, and then reconstruction — all under our Nassau County General Contractor license, with all required Town of Oyster Bay building permits pulled by us. Your insurance company gets billed directly. You stay informed at every step. And when we’re finished, the property is inspected, cleared, and ready for your family to come home.
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Fire damage restoration in Hicksville isn’t a one-size-fits-all service. The homes here — most of them built between the 1940s and 1960s, with oil-fired heating systems, aging ductwork, and construction materials that haven’t been legal to use in decades — require a specific set of capabilities that most restoration companies simply don’t have.
Oil burner puff-backs are one of the most common smoke damage calls we get in Nassau County. When an oil burner backfires, it coats walls, ceilings, and ductwork in a fine, oily black soot that smears if you try to clean it the wrong way. It’s different from dry fire soot, and it requires a different approach entirely. We’ve handled enough puff-back calls throughout Hicksville and the surrounding areas — Bethpage, Plainview, Levittown — to know exactly what that cleanup looks like and what it takes to do it correctly.
Beyond puff-backs, our full fire restoration scope includes structural drying and water extraction from firefighting suppression, soot and smoke remediation throughout the entire structure, NADCA-certified HVAC duct cleaning to restore indoor air quality, asbestos and lead abatement where required, mold prevention and remediation, and complete reconstruction through to final inspection. We document every phase of the work in a format that insurance adjusters recognize and accept — which means fewer disputes and faster claim resolution for you.
The most important thing you can do in the first hour after a fire is call a professional restoration company — before you re-enter the home, before you try to clean anything, and before you call anyone other than your insurance company. Hicksville homes built in the mid-20th century very commonly contain asbestos in floor tiles, pipe insulation, and ceiling materials. Fire disturbs those materials, and re-entering without knowing what’s been released can expose your family to hazards that aren’t visible to the naked eye.
Once you’ve made those two calls — restoration company and insurance — let the professionals assess the property first. The Nassau County Fire Marshal’s Office will likely document the scene, and the Town of Oyster Bay Buildings Department may also respond, as they did following the house fire on Page Drive in January 2024. Having a restoration company already engaged when those agencies arrive puts you in a much stronger position for both the remediation process and the insurance claim that follows.
Timeline depends heavily on the scope of the damage and what’s discovered during the initial assessment. A contained kitchen fire with limited smoke spread might be fully restored in two to four weeks. A fire that has spread into wall cavities, disturbed asbestos-containing materials, or caused significant structural damage can take two to four months from emergency response through permitted reconstruction.
In Nassau County, the permit process through the Town of Oyster Bay adds a layer that homeowners should factor into their timeline expectations. Structural reconstruction requires permits, inspections, and sign-offs — and those don’t happen overnight. Working with us — a licensed general contractor who knows the local permit process in Hicksville and across Nassau County — significantly reduces delays. We pull the permits, manage the inspections, and keep the project moving so you’re not waiting on a second contractor to get started.
In most cases, yes — fire damage is one of the core covered perils in a standard homeowners insurance policy. But “covered” and “fully paid” are two different things. The amount your insurance company pays depends heavily on how thoroughly the damage is documented, how accurately the scope of work is communicated to the adjuster, and whether your contractor is billing in a format the insurer accepts.
We bill insurance companies directly and document every phase of the restoration process with the level of detail that adjusters require. For Hicksville homeowners with properties valued at $634,000 or more, the difference between a well-documented claim and a poorly documented one can easily run into tens of thousands of dollars. We’ve guided families through this process throughout Nassau County, and we know what adjusters look for — and what they’ll push back on if the paperwork isn’t right.
If your home was built before 1980 — which describes the vast majority of Hicksville’s residential housing stock, with a median construction year of 1955 — then yes, you should assume asbestos-containing materials are present until a licensed inspector confirms otherwise. Common locations in homes of this era include pipe insulation, 9×9 vinyl floor tiles, ceiling tiles, textured plaster, and drywall joint compound. Fire disturbs all of these materials, potentially releasing asbestos fibers into the air.
New York State law requires that asbestos abatement be performed by a NYS DOL-licensed contractor with certified workers. This is not a gray area — it’s a legal requirement, and it applies to your home if asbestos-containing materials were disturbed during the fire or the firefighting process. We hold the NYS DOL Asbestos license and have certified abatement workers on staff. We identify the issue during the initial assessment and handle it as part of the overall restoration scope, so you’re not scrambling to find a separate abatement contractor mid-project.
A puff-back happens when an oil burner backfires — usually because of a delayed ignition or a buildup of unburned fuel — and ejects a fine mist of oily soot through the combustion chamber and into your home’s living spaces and ductwork. It doesn’t look like a traditional fire, but the contamination it causes is extensive. Walls, ceilings, furniture, clothing, and the entire HVAC system can be coated in a greasy black film that’s extremely difficult to remove without the right equipment and technique.
Long Island has one of the highest concentrations of oil-heated homes in the country, and puff-backs are one of the most common smoke damage calls we handle throughout Nassau County and Hicksville specifically. As for insurance coverage — most standard homeowners policies do cover sudden and accidental puff-back damage, but the claim needs to be documented correctly. Coverage can be disputed if the insurer argues the damage resulted from a maintenance issue rather than a sudden event. Having a professional restoration company document the scene immediately after the incident significantly strengthens your claim.
This is one of the most important questions you can ask — and most homeowners don’t think to ask it until something goes wrong. In New York State, legitimate fire restoration work on a home like the ones throughout Hicksville requires several distinct credentials: IICRC certification for fire and smoke damage restoration, a NYS DOL Asbestos license if asbestos-containing materials are involved, USEPA Lead/RRP certification for pre-1978 homes, and a Nassau County General Contractor license for any structural reconstruction work.
Ask any company you’re considering to show you their NYS DOL Asbestos license number and their Nassau County GC license. Both are verifiable through public records. If a company can’t produce those credentials for work in Nassau County, they are legally prohibited from performing significant portions of what your home likely needs after a fire. We hold all of the above — and we’re transparent about our license numbers because in a community like Hicksville, where the housing stock almost guarantees these credentials will be needed, there’s no good reason to hire a company that doesn’t have them.
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