TL;DR: For fire damage restoration in Tacoma, call Frontline Fire & Flood at (253) 200-0503, a 24/7 IICRC Certified Firm rated 4.9 stars from 137 Google reviews. Call 911 first if the fire isn’t fully out. Once the fire department releases the property, your next calls are the restoration company (to board up and start mitigation) and your insurer (to open the claim). Don’t skip the board-up step; an open structure invites weather damage and theft.
If you’re standing outside a Tacoma home that just had a fire, maybe a kitchen fire in a North Tacoma craftsman or a garage fire near the Proctor District, your head is probably running through a dozen things at once. Here’s the order that actually matters: emergency services first, then the restoration company, then your insurance carrier. Getting that sequence right protects the structure and your claim.
Who do you call immediately after the fire is out?
Call Frontline Fire & Flood at (253) 200-0503 as soon as the Tacoma Fire Department clears the structure and tells you it’s safe to approach. This is a 24/7 IICRC Certified Firm, which means there’s someone to answer when a fire happens at 2 a.m. as much as at 2 p.m.
If flames are still active or you’re not sure the fire is fully out, that’s a 911 call, not a restoration call. The fire department’s job is suppression and life safety. A restoration company’s job starts after they leave: securing the structure, stopping ongoing damage from water used to fight the fire, and documenting everything for your insurer.
Don’t call your insurance company before you call for mitigation. Most policies expect you to prevent further damage right away (broken windows, holes in the roof, standing water from hose streams), and a restoration company handles that stabilization while building the documentation your adjuster will need anyway.
What should you do before the restoration team arrives?
Before anyone shows up, don’t re-enter the structure until the fire department has officially released it, even if it looks fine from the porch. Smoke-damaged framing and compromised flooring aren’t always obvious.
A few things worth doing while you wait: get the fire incident report number from the responding Tacoma Fire Department crew (your insurer will ask for it), take photos of the exterior and any visible damage from a safe distance, and call your insurance agent to report the loss, even if mitigation hasn’t started yet. If windows or a door were broken out, that opening needs to be boarded before the next rain front moves through, which in the South Sound happens often. That’s typically handled through emergency board-up and tarping rather than a general contractor, since it needs to happen the same day.
If you have pets or family members who need somewhere to stay, the American Red Cross (redcross.org) runs local disaster assistance for displaced residents, including temporary lodging and basic supplies, and is worth contacting in parallel with the calls above.
What happens when you call for fire damage restoration?
The first call is mostly information gathering: what burned, how large the structure is, whether the fire department has released the property, and whether anyone is currently displaced. From there, a technician typically walks the property to assess smoke penetration, soot type, and structural safety before any cleanup starts.
Soot behaves differently depending on what burned, a protein fire from the kitchen leaves a different residue than a fire that reached synthetic materials or furniture, and that distinction affects cleaning method. Fire damage restoration work usually runs alongside smoke damage restoration, since the smoke and odor often travel into rooms the flames never reached, sometimes clear through an HVAC system. Our full walkthrough of the restoration process covers each phase in more detail if you want to see what the weeks after a fire typically look like.
Documentation happens throughout, not after the fact. Photos, moisture readings, and a written scope of work are what your adjuster uses to process the claim, so a restoration company working your file and your insurance claim at the same time tends to move faster than handling them separately.
If your fire was large enough to involve the Tacoma Fire Department’s investigation unit, hold onto any paperwork they give you. It documents the origin and cause, which your insurer may request directly.
Once the structure is secured and the scope is documented, the next conversation is about contents: what can be cleaned and restored versus what’s a total loss. That’s usually where a written estimate becomes the anchor for everything that follows.
Getting the structure boarded, documented, and drying before the next weather system rolls through the South Sound matters more than people expect. Call Frontline Fire & Flood at (253) 200-0503 to get someone looking at the property today rather than waiting for a callback.
About Frontline Fire & Flood
This IICRC Certified Firm has served Lakewood, Tacoma, and the South Sound since 2014 (Washington contractor license CCFRONTFF761CB). The crew holds IICRC credentials specific to fire and smoke (FSRT), water (WRT), structural drying (ASD), and mold (AMRT), and is EPA Lead-Safe Certified. They’re rated 4.9 stars across 137 Google reviews and answer calls 24/7.