Getting smoke residue and its smell out of a Jonesboro building
Smoke goes further than fire and it goes early. When the dryer at the Frito-Lay plant caught on October 8, 2018 the flames were out before crews reached the building, and smoke still spread through the interior. That gap, between where a fire actually burned and where its residue ended up, is the entire subject of this page.
The dispatcher will ask whether it is still coming in or already stopped. That changes who goes out first.
There is no water-damage coverage anywhere in this county. Fire, smoke and soot are what this page can help with.
Where residue travels when the fire stops
Heat pressurizes a room and pushes smoke out through every path available: the gaps around light fixtures, the top plate of a wall, return air openings, the attic hatch, the ductwork. The Jami Bee Motel fire on Nettleton Avenue severely damaged one unit and the attic space above it, which is the standard pattern in a row of rooms sharing one roof cavity. In a single-family house the equivalent is the ceiling of a closet nobody opened for a week, or the underside of roof sheathing over a room that never saw flame.
Cold surfaces collect more than warm ones. Residue lines up on nail heads, on the studs behind drywall, on window glass, and in corners where the air slowed down. Those patterns are how a crew reads which way smoke moved through a building and where to open finishes rather than guessing.
- You callOne number per county. The dispatcher takes the address, the ZIP and a short description of what happened.
- A local crew calls backAn independent restoration contractor already working that county rings you directly and sets a time.
- 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.
ZIP codes covered here
7240172404
Coverage is defined by ZIP, not by a radius drawn on a map.
Not all soot is the same material
A fast, hot fire in wood and paper leaves a dry, powdery residue that lifts with a dry sponge and a HEPA vacuum before anything wet touches it. A slow, oxygen-starved fire leaves a sticky film that smears if you rub it dry and needs a detergent or solvent. Burning plastics and wire insulation leave a fine oily black deposit that bonds to metal and glass. Cooking oil leaves something different again, which is why kitchen work has its own page.
Sequence is where most jobs go wrong. Wet-cleaning a dry residue drives it into the paper face of drywall and into unfinished wood, and at that point it stops being a cleaning problem and becomes a sealing or replacement problem. Dry first, always, and test a small area before committing a method to a whole room.
What is specific to here
- Jonesboro's older downtown commercial core includes early-20th-century wood-frame and brick structures such as the 1899 brick Edward L. Westbrooke Building at 505 Union Street (across from the Craighead County Courthouse) and the 1907 wood-frame former Home Ice Company building on Cate Avenue, which stood until it was condemned and demolished in 2021.
- City Water and Light (CWL) is Jonesboro's combined municipal water, electric, and sewer utility, operating the East Side Wastewater Treatment Plant and substations including Farville and Hergett; CWL's water-supply adequacy is one of the graded components behind the fire department's ISO Class 1 rating.
- Jonesboro is served by I-555, US-49, US-63, US-78, AR-1 and AR-18, and by Jonesboro Municipal Airport (Essential Air Service via Southern Airways Express); the city has a humid subtropical climate with roughly 52 inches of annual precipitation and only about 3.9 inches of average annual snowfall.
Porous Jonesboro and sealed Jonesboro
The older core of the city is masonry and plaster, with the 1899 brick on Union Street the visible end of that stock. Brick, mortar, plaster, old trim and exposed attic framing are all porous, and they hold odor after every trace of visible residue has been washed away. Sealing that framing with a pigmented shellac or a comparable coating is often the only thing that actually stops it, and it is legitimate work rather than a shortcut past cleaning.
Painted drywall in a newer subdivision is easier. Residue mostly stays on the surface and comes off with the right cleaner, provided heat did not drive it into the paper. The awkward middle case is a house with both, which in Jonesboro is common: an older frame house with a remodeled wing, or a downtown building with a modern interior fitted inside masonry walls.
Why the smell comes back in July
This is a humid subtropical climate with about 52 inches of rain a year. Warmth and humidity reopen odor that a cool, dry February appeared to have settled. If a building was cleaned but never sealed, or the duct system was left out of the scope, the first long stretch of hot weather brings it back and the owner assumes the work failed. Often the work simply stopped one stage early.
Ductwork is the part owners forget. A forced-air system that ran during or after a fire pulled residue into the trunk lines and has been redistributing it into rooms that were never involved. Cleaning the system, or at minimum inspecting it and changing what filters remain, belongs in the scope in writing rather than as an afterthought.
When it is small enough to do yourself
One scorched pan, one smoky room, windows open for an afternoon and the smell gone in a day or two: that does not need a contractor, and neither does a candle mark on a single wall. What justifies a crew is residue in more than one room, residue on ceilings, any smell that survives a week of ventilation, or a fire the department put out with hose lines.
Whether the air in the building is safe for the people living in it is a medical question and belongs to a doctor. A restoration contractor can only speak to surfaces, materials and what has to be cleaned, sealed or removed.
Questions people actually ask
Can painting over smoke residue seal in the smell?
Ordinary paint will not. Residue has to be cleaned off first, and porous surfaces such as bare framing and plaster generally need a sealing primer before finish paint. Paint applied straight over a greasy or sooty film tends to peel and lets odor through.
Do you have to tear out drywall to get rid of smoke smell?
Not always. Where the residue stayed on the surface, cleaning and sealing does it. Where heat drove residue into the paper face or the insulation behind it, removing that section is faster and cheaper than repeated attempts to clean it.
How long before the smell is actually gone?
It depends on how porous the building is and how much of it was involved. A single sealed and cleaned room usually clears quickly; an old house with plaster and open framing takes longer, and hot weather is the real test of whether it worked.
Is an ozone treatment on its own enough?
No. Deodorizing is the last stage, not a substitute for removing residue. If the material producing the smell is still on the framing or inside the ducts, any treatment buys weeks rather than settling it.
Nearby towns on this line
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None of this replaces a walk-through. It is here so the walk-through makes sense when it happens.