Closing the building up the night the fire is out

The hole in the roof is usually not the fire's doing. Crews cut it, on purpose, to let heat and smoke out so they can get in low and find the seat of the burn. Windows go the same way. When the engines leave, the building is open by design, and closing it is the first restoration job on the list.

Why the building is open when the trucks pull out

Vertical ventilation is a deliberate tactic. Cutting the roof over the fire gives the hot gas somewhere to go, drops the temperature at the ceiling, and buys the interior crew the visibility to work. Breaking or taking out windows does the same on the horizontal. Neither is damage in the sense of carelessness; both are the reason the rest of the structure is still standing.

Overhaul is the other reason a house looks worse after the fire than during it. Once the flame is knocked down, crews pull ceilings, open wall cavities and lift flooring to find fire that ran into the voids. A fire that traveled up a wall chase and along a joist bay will keep smoldering behind intact-looking finish, and a building released without overhaul is a building that can rekindle hours later. The ceilings on the floor are evidence that somebody checked.

1. You callOne number per county. The dispatcher takes the address, the ZIP and a short description of what happened.
2. A local crew calls backAn independent restoration contractor already working that county rings you directly and sets a time.
3. They look, then scope itNothing is priced from a phone call. The crew walks the building, takes readings, and writes a scope you can hand to your adjuster.

What a board-up is actually for

Four things, in roughly this order. Keeping weather out of a structure whose interior is now absorbent. Keeping people out, because an open, vacant, fire-damaged building draws entry and a second incident. Keeping animals out, since an attic opened at the ridge is an invitation within a day. And demonstrating to the insurance carrier that reasonable steps were taken, because most property policies place a duty on the insured to protect the property from further loss, and damage that accrues after the fire because nothing was closed can become an argument.

The work itself is simple and gets done badly often. Panels are cut to bear on solid framing rather than on trim, and they are fastened into structure. On a residence the common method runs interior backer members across the opening with through-fasteners, so nothing can be pried from the outside without going through the wall. At least one opening is set up as a door that can be secured and reopened, because the adjuster, the origin investigator, the electrician and the homeowner all need to get in, and cutting a new hole every visit defeats the purpose.

How a tarp holds, and how it fails

A roof cover only works if water cannot get under its top edge. That means running the material over the ridge and down the far slope, or terminating it under a course of shingles high on the slope, and it means the fasteners along the top edge sit above the water line, not in the middle of the run. A tarp stopped short of the ridge funnels every rain straight into the opening it was supposed to protect, which is the single most common failure.

Wind is the other one. Loose material flogs itself to pieces in a night. Battens screwed through the cover into decking or framing hold the field down and spread the load, and the edges are wrapped or weighted rather than left to flap. Ponding kills covers too; where the deck is sagging or a valley collects, the cover needs support under it or a path for the water off it. A cover installed properly is a temporary roof for weeks. A cover thrown over a hole and weighted with whatever was in the truck is a week at most, and often less.

• Run the cover over the ridge or terminate it high under shingles, never at the edge of the hole.
• Fasten with battens through the material into decking or framing, top edge first.
• Support or drain any low spot so water cannot pond and stretch the material.
• Cover the ventilation cuts and the chimney or vent penetrations near them, not just the burned area.
• Re-check after the first hard rain and after any storm with wind, and expect to re-tension.

Rain, not snow, is the local threat

Jonesboro takes roughly fifty-two inches of precipitation a year and averages only about three and nine-tenths inches of snow. An open roof in Craighead County is therefore a rain problem almost exclusively, and rain is the worse of the two for a fire loss because it carries soot down through the structure and wets the very materials that hold odor. Water landing in a burned attic runs along the top plate, into the wall cavity, and into insulation that is already contaminated. A day of delay in covering can convert a top-floor loss into a whole-house one.

November 6, 2025 in Jonesboro is the version of this nobody can prevent. A large fire in the 5600 block of East Nettleton Avenue had the building fully engulfed when the department arrived, the roof came down shortly after crews got there, and the chief declared the structure a total loss. When the roof is on the floor, the job changes from covering to fencing and securing the site. Board-up and tarping are for the far commoner case, the July 12, 2026 fire at the Jami Bee Motel on Nettleton Avenue, where one unit and its attic space took severe damage, nine residents were displaced, and the rest of the building had to be closed, dried and kept secure while the burned end was worked.

Photograph it before it is covered

Once a panel is over the window and a cover is over the roof, the visible evidence of what the fire did to the exterior is gone until demolition. Wide shots of every elevation, close shots of each opening, the ventilation cuts, the soot pattern above the windows where flame vented, and the interior of each room before anything moves. Date the photographs. Keep the emergency work documented separately from the rest of the job, because emergency mitigation is normally handled as its own item on a claim rather than folded into the repair estimate.

The fire department's report matters as much. Where the origin is still under investigation, nothing gets moved, cleaned or discarded in that area until it is released, and a board-up crew works around it. Securing the building and preserving the scene are not in conflict, but they have to be sequenced deliberately, and the first crew on site should know which rooms are closed.

Questions people actually ask

Use the number above and the contractor will take it from there.