Hello,
My wife’s parents’ property in Kainan, Wakayama Prefecture has been badly flooded from the heavy rain on Fri, June 2nd. The house is an old, large Japanese style house with 2 small apartment buildings and a parking lot that is probably the size of a convenience store lot.
Everyone in the family has been pitching in to help clean up the mess since Saturday. However, it’s really taking an incredibly long time. My father and mother-in-law are old and simply can’t do it by themselves.
Kainan City Hall dispatched 4 volunteers on Monday to work for 2 hours but it’s just not enough. It took 11 of us just to partially clear the thick, heavy, wet mud from the parking lot on Sunday. It’s that bad. The garage is ruined, a bedroom has been destroyed, etc. This is overwhelmingly tough to clean for the family.
Is there a professional water and mud removal service company in Japan that can help clean up a flooded property? My wife claims no. Surely there must be something. If so, what do I search for in Japanese? Can anyone help?
6 comments
Any insurance company offering home policies should have contact info for clean-up companies on hand.
Call their homeowners insurance company?
> It took 11 of us just to partially clear the thick, heavy, wet mud from the parking lot on Sunday.
I volunteered to help cleanup Hitoyoshi floods in 2020, and yeah that mud is absolutely maddening to remove.
As for services, it probably won’t be cheap, but you can search (locally) 水害復旧 サービス and start from there. Some of the other keywords are 床下浸水 and you certainly will want 消毒 as well, for the living areas as the flooded matter is usually full of crap (literally)
Your insurance company should be able to refer someone.
Thanks everyone for the information! It’s very appreciated.
Everyone is basically saying contact the insurance company. That’s exactly what I said to my wife before I made this post. I’m going to push this a little further with her to get her to encourage dad to call his insurance company.
but isn’t a house insurance like divided into earthquake, fire etc. They could just not have the “water disaster” part in their contract.
Insurance, as others have said.
Shovel what you can, beware any fridges with pull out drawers in the bottom.
Wet tatamis are goners. Wooden flooring is likely a write-off, depending how long it was a wet.
Shovel, scrape, (power) spray, and sprinkle borax, etc. Once the temperature goes up, bugs will be out in droves.
Advice from Tohoku. I’ve helped do it in dozens of houses.