Dangerous Mold Threatens to Destroy Long Island Town

March marks the beginning of spring, allergy season, and when many mold colonies start to emerge. This year, a particularly robust colony of toxic black mold began emerging in one mid-island hamlet. County officials were unable to pinpoint the source of the mold or explain the rapid growth and called in American Restoration Solutions to mitigate the mold.

“We’ve been on large jobs before, but this was unheard of. Definitely an industry first. It was like the entire town had been consumed by black mold!” exclaimed ARS General Manager Kevin Lyons, an industry veteran.

“In a normal remediation situation, we’ll remove mold by HEPA filtering the air, clean and disinfect the infested surfaces to remove as much growth as possible, then spray an anti-fungal treatment to inhibit new growth and encapsulate effected areas if necessary. In this case, we couldn’t encapsulate an entire town. We had to get creative,” said Lyons.

The creative solution? Lyons and county officials worked in conjunction with the FAA to provide stationary jet-engines, which American Restoration Solutions converted into massive HEPA-filtered air scrubbers powerful enough to scrub the air for eight square miles.

American Restoration Solutions was also able to secure a BA-140 tanker aircraft specially equipped with a MAFFS (military airborne firefighting system), then modified it to deploy hundreds of thousands of gallons of anti-fungal and disinfectant onto the mold-covered surfaces below.

The ground team coordinated airdrops with the sky team after manually scrubbing each and every structure inside and out of the affected zone. “American Restoration Solutions’ sister company, American Dry Cleaners, removed all clothing and returned every garment clean, spotless, and fresh,” said Danny Kuchlik, owner of American Dry Cleaners.

“I can’t believe both companies worked so well together and so quickly to clean our entire town and our clothing. Everything came out wonderful, and I’m notoriously hard to please,” said a local resident who only gave the name Karen. She declined to give a last name, but did ask to speak with a manager.