This award recognizes the Asheville area’s fastest growing small business enterprises for their outstanding achievements and contributions to our region’s economy.
First Restoration Services of Asheville is a three year winner of the award.
We attended the chamber expo last week. It was a beautiful fall day on the campus of Blue Ridge Community College in Flat Rock. It is so nice to be a part of small time America in Henderson County. Yet growing and expanding our customer base. We enjoy customers from Asheville, Waynesville, Brevard, Hendersonville as well as other outlying counties in WNC. We are proud to serve our neighbors. We thank the Chamber for exposing us to many, such marketing/networking events.
Good Selling!
Sherri Redden
Odorox®: Solves extreme odor and bacteria problems the natural way- no chemicals or sprays.
Effective. Fast. Environmentally safe. Odorox Environmental offers natural hydroxyl technology that eliminates odor-causing bacteria, unsafe viruses and lingering smells, all helping create a healthier work and living environment.
Restoration professionals, home-owners, and anyone who has a tough odor or environmental issue can benefit from the natural hydroxyl cleansing technology that eliminates many issues.
The Odorox® technology replicates nature’s process indoors. Contaminated air is drawn though the machine’s chamber where the humidity from the air is combined with multiple frequencies of UV light to create hydroxyls and sanitize the air. The purified air is recycled back into the environment along with active hydroxyl molecules to further deodorize and decontaminate air, surfaces and contents.
Hydroxyls are safe, naturally occurring compounds, and are the single most important cleansing agent for our outdoor environment. Ronald Prinn, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology states “This one (Hydroxyl) molecule is very, very important. It is the critical cleaning chemical for the atmosphere.”
The EPA reports that indoor air quality can be up to 100 times more polluted than outside air resulting in unhealthy living conditions and many other associated health risks. The American Lung Association reports that poor indoor air quality is among the top five environmental risks to public health.
Odorox Environmental LLC is the official distributor of the Odorox® Hydroxyl Generators for the Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina and South Carolina. This non-chemical technology provides an environmentally safe solution for removing the most difficult odors, and destroying harmful bacteria and volatile organic compounds (VOC’s).
I worked at the Brevard Chamber of Commerce Expo with Kelly on Tuesday night. I wasn’t really surprised to hear from a lot of the attendees that they wish they would have used us instead of the company their insurance company told them to use. It is a common misconception that you have to use the insurance companies preferred contractor. Not too many people have had to use their home owners policy, but a good number of people have had to use their auto policy. It is very frustrating to have to take your car to a “preferred” body shop only to have generic parts put on and not have a say in the finished product. First Restoration Services of Asheville works for the property owner and with the insurance company to restore your property to beyond industry standards. To know how good of a job we do, we encourage you to ask around and we are sure before long you will hear from many home and business owners how good of a job we have done for them. We have been locally owned and restoring residential, commercial, educational, medical, and industrial properties due to water damage, fire damage, smoke damage, and other disasters since 1987 and take pride in every job, no matter how large or small, to be completed to the highest standards.
Asheville Hendersonville Brevard and Surrounding Areas
Disasters Happen. We Take Care of Them All. 828-684-1582 or 800-537-6151.
The use of social media for emergency and disaster communications is currently a lively topic of discussion as those in the EMS, fire, and emergency management fields use popular tools like blogging, Facebook and Twitter to notify their followers (a follower being a person who signs up to receive information from a particular individual, group or organization). Many groups have even been created around using social media as a tool to innovate crisis response.
These tools allow users to share ideas, expertise and problem solving with a larger network of people faster than ever before. For the first time, the people affected by an event, emergency or disaster can communicate with those who are in charge of responding to it almost immediately. Several state, local and government agencies have already embraced these social media tools and use them on a regular basis to disseminate important information. Some do this well and others need improvement.
But just how reliable are these social media channels to send and receive information about calamities? Will the information get through when it counts? How reliable is the information being sent and by whom? If your agency uses these tools, is there a “one-size-fits-most” approach? And what about those affected members of the community (i.e. impoverished, low income, elderly, disabled or simply those that don’t enjoy the use of computers and Smartphone’s) without the ability to either send or receive “tweets”? How are they helped?
Posting on your favorite social website is usually not an issue—simply open your browser or Smartphone app and post what’s on your mind. About 99% of the time your post goes through with no problem. But when there is a calamity in your area and thousands or millions of users are posting from one geographical area, will your post get through? Will the limitation of the medium let you make sense of your message (e.g. micro blogs such as Twitter are limited to 140 characters)? Will you even have an Internet connection at all? What happens when terrestrial landline and cellular telephone lines are inoperable for days or weeks?
Red Cross Social Media Resources that when a large-scale disaster occurs, like the earthquake in Chile this past February, that normal methods of telecommunication are not available for at least the first 48 hours. Not only is electricity and phone communication disrupted but Internet as well. This means that only satellite communications (SATCOM) devices are able to “reach out” using voice and data with any kind of reliability to coordinate disaster response assets in and outside the affected areas. Generally speaking there are several types of SATCOM that can be referenced in a past ICE PACK blog posting on Crisis Communications. The communications from these devices do not rely on land-based towers, fiber optic or copper transmission lines but work directly with low and high earth orbiting communications satellites as long as the device can “see” the open sky (i.e. they do not work well indoors).
New low cost lightweight personal satellite communication devices from SPOT and DeLorme can be configured to send one-way communications to SMS (Short Message Service) enabled cellular telephones, Internet email addresses as well as post messages on social media sites that are hosted out of the affected area. Of particular note is the DeLorme PN60W handheld GPS/satellite communications device that provides you with not only customizable preloaded messages that are GPS tagged with your location, but a 40 character free-text capability as well. This technology can be a game changer, and has tremendous potential in the disaster response and Search and Rescue communities! Look for a Field Test Report on this device on the ICE PACK website in the coming weeks. We’ve been working on testing this device from inside vehicles deep in the National Forests of WVA., driving through deep urban canyons of the National Capitol Region, all the way out to the high desert mountain trails around Moab, UT.
When Internet and telecommunications service are restored, social media users will be able to again post information relative to the emergency or disaster event. Key words are quickly implemented to tag posts, called hash-tags, about the event to allow users to quickly filter only the posts pertaining to the specific event. Still, posts must be evaluated to make sure the data is accurate and that there are no false posts. Keep in mind the terrible unfounded rumors that flooded the international media outlets from the New Orleans Superdome during the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Note that during a similar event social media could easily fall prey to rumoring with even greater speed if the user community is not vigilant.
Emergency communications being distributed via social media is here to stay and, as these channels are further developed and new ones are created, soon “social media” will start becoming just “media”.
Special thanks to our social media peers @NorthlandFox and @Caroldn for your help in researching this article!
I did not know that Hallmark had created a National Boss Day. I think I’ll send them a note thanking them for such a day…..probably not !!!!
Was I ever surprised by our employees last Friday by an early morning blow out for my wife Shelley and I. We were blown away by all the great things said about us and the way we treat our employees and run this business.
This kind act demonstrates to me a couple of things.
1. We have great employees, that perform without hesitation to their duties. Sometimes it’s just not a glamorous days work, but there is always a teamwork attitude and they get the tasks done.
2. It also shows me that due diligence in hiring great individuals suited for the job description really pays off. Using good hiring practices eliminates having to use firing practices.
So, thanks again guys and gals for all the great praises and food but I really want you to know…..without you, the employees, First Restoration Services of Asheville would not be the great company it is today.
We had a great time roasting our leaders Chris and Shelley Silliman. It was amazing to hear the consistency of the glowing testimonials they received from all. The entire team at FRS is so grateful to be in their employ!
Make it an awesome week:)
Sherri
You never know what the next phone call at First Restoration Services is going to be about. I talked to a gentleman asking me to come and give him a cleaning estimate on a RV that had caught on fire in Hendersonville North Carolina. The back of the refrigerator in the RV had caught on fire from a malfunction. So you never know what is going to cause that next disaster.
First Restoration Services was ranked in the Qualified Remodeler:
Top 500 Remodelers List for 2010.
We are so pleased to share this exciting news. Our team is to thank for this prestigious award!
Make it an awesome week!
Sherri
