Normally, flooding is thought of as a ground level occurence and the man in the street does not associate floods with high rise buildings.

The insurance industry is well aware of the potential for water damage from flooding in high rise buildings.  In a typical big city building there would normally be water tanks located every 8 to 10 floors, and these can give rise to floods in a variety of ways, with malfunction of level detection devices and human error being common causes.

Another common source of flooding incidents in modern, high rise buildings is leaking or rupturing water chiller lines for building air-conditioning systems or malfunctions in fire water sprinkler systems.  These incidents usually give rise to flooding at entrances to lift shafts.

When water is released on an upper floor, the water will often flow down lift wells, contacting electric and electronic parts of the elevator system.  In a typical modern elevator shaft, printed circuit boards are at numerous locations, on top of the elevator car and on the walls of the shaft itself.  These electronic parts can, on a replacement basis, constitute 50% of the cost of the elevator system.  There is therefore, potential for considerable loss by insurers, and conversely, considerable savings if the items can be restored.

The main problem is the possibility for electrical damage, with water running down while the elevators are electrically alive.  In one accident in which we became involved in the restoration, about 50% of the PCBs were found to be electrically damaged through being enlivened at the time of the flooding incident.

When floods occur at other times, for example before commissioning or at night while the elevators are switched off, restoration would be expected to achieve close to 100% recovery rate.

This type of water damage can give rise to high levels of contamination by virture of the large amounts of water borne solids that can be deposited by settling out.

The deposits seen in the accompanying photograph of the circuit board with silt deposits required special precision cleaning techniques to effectively remove them and ensure that there was no ongoing deterioration after their removal.

Surprising to some, DAMAGE CONTROL SDN BHD ( DC ) has carried out a number of restorations at the request of marine loss adjusters.  The normal assumption would be that the time marine wetting was discovered, there would be so much corrosion damage that constructive loss would be the rule.  To the relief of some insurers there are notable exceptions to this rule. Marine policies often cover from door-to-door, and many accidents occur towards the end of a marine voyage, during storage at a depot, or even during truck transport to the insured’s premises.

Some of the items of machinery we have inspected have obviously only been wetted in the previous 48 hours. An example of this is given below.

One of the first processes that bales of textile fibres are subjected to is combing, where the fibres are straightened prior to spinning.  The steel needles used in the process are very fine, of the order of 0.3mm in diameter. Because of their large surface area to volume ratio, they are very susceptible to damage by rusting. In large textile machinery losses, it is unusual for a restoration company to be appointed quickly enough to prevent the needles fitted to the machines from becoming so damaged they have to be discarded.  However, recently we were asked to look at a shipment of needles that had been wet on the day before, during delivery to the factory.  By acting on the day of inspection, we were able to prevent the corrosion from setting in, and 99% of the needles were accepted by the insured after our work was complete.