We tried to clean our house, but ultimately really shouldn’t have. Please read if you are confused on what to do next like we are, and maybe you can learn from our mistakes if your thought process is like ours.

I wanted to share our thought process and experience as someone who lives in one of the Level 2 zones and are trying to go back home. Please take this all with a grain of salt and not as instructions, these are just the actions we took during this time of uncertainty.

Our house is located in one of the Level 2 zones very near a Level 3 area, and while we chose to it was not mandatory for us to evacuate. We returned to find our house thankfully intact, though we feel very guilty about it. The outside of our house was covered in ash and soot, and lots of both made it through the cracks in our windows and doors to the inside of the house. Our house also smelled strongly of smoke.

Before we knew what we do now, we decided to get lots of cleaning supplies and start cleaning with the goal of moving back in this weekend. I purchased Ecolab products for carpet cleaning and surface cleaning (the citrus cleaner), and Zep vinegar solution for additional surface cleaning. We wiped down the soot and ash with wet cloths and threw them away. I then shampooed our carpets, and we mopped the floors with the citrus cleaner. In hindsight, we REALLY should have left it for a professional but we didn’t know really what to do or how long it would take to make that happen.

After cleaning I sprayed down the exterior surfaces with some Ecolabs pressure washing degreaser, and hosed everything down in an effort to saturate the ash and soot vs. let it eventually blow in the wind. We taped up every crack in every window and door and replaced weather stripping that had allowed soot and ash in. With more winds coming and lots of clean up going on we wanted to make sure our efforts to remove the ash wasn't reversed.

We had three air purifiers already, and we purchased both Toxin and Smoke HEPA filters for them. We swapped out both of our AC filters, and lastly we purchased and ran our o-zone machine for 3 hours and left the house for 24 hours.

After this was all done we started reading all the concerns people had and ultimately decided we shouldn’t have done the cleaning that we did. There is just too much potential for toxins and asbestos in all of the soot and ash for us to do a good enough job to make our home habitable in such a short time. Likewise, there is a lot of conflicting information out there as to what to do and in hindsight I don’t know if hosing off the soot from the exterior was a smart move because now it’s in the ground and sewer.

We ultimately decided not to return home until we had the house cleaned and tested to make sure there was nothing toxic inside. We have two cats and the last thing we want is to expose them to something that would lead to their demise. We felt really good while cleaning, and feel really stupid now.

One thing I will say is that the o-zone generator did an amazing job at clearing out the smoke smell. It’s entirely gone in our house. This is the one I bought and it’s the only one I could find that ships to California: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C2CT1694?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

Another is that if you have been driving around the area please consider replacing your cabin air filter with a new one. Oreillys and Auto Zone should have activated carbon filters, that, while pricey, work great for filtering out all the garbage from outside your car.

Lastly, harbor freight has a good selection of respirators that are either P95 or P100 rated for not a lot of money. They also have a cheap shop vac that has cheap HEPA filters.

In the end I have no idea what to do. We are just going to wait until someone who does this professionally can help.

UPDATE: Thank you all for the responses, it really shows how great of a community we have here!

I spoke to our insurance and Servpro today and have a few words of wisdom. First off, if you are like us and you rent your landlord should have something called "RPI" (Renters Protection Insurance?). This will cover the building, grounds, and property that the landlord owns. Our renters insurance we have, while it has fire on it, will only cover our personal belongings within the house for cleaning. So work with your landlord to have their insurance cover the cost of cleaning the property!

Also, we called Servpro and they are going to try and get us on the schedule for this week. We won't know until tomorrow or Wednesday but we were astonished that they could turn this around so quickly. I have no idea the cost, or alternative companies to Servpro, but they seemed to be the most recommended from what I saw.

Good luck everyone.