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How to Protect Your Family After a Sewage Backup

A sewage backup turns a home into a place that needs care in how it is used. The water on the floor is Category 3 black water, treated as a health hazard, and the first job is not the cleanup but keeping the people in the house away from it. That sounds obvious, but in a home with children, pets, and a daily routine built around the rooms that are affected, it takes deliberate steps. This guide sets out those steps in general terms.

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It gives no DIY cleanup advice and no health advice beyond avoiding contact with contaminated water and calling a professional. For the service itself, the sewage cleanup page sets out what is offered in general terms.

Keep everyone away from the water

The first step after a sewage backup is to keep everyone away from the contaminated water. That means not walking through it, not letting children near it, and not trying to rescue belongings from it. Water spreads contamination to shoes, clothes and hands, and from there to door handles, taps and other rooms. A person who walks through a sewage backup and then through the rest of the house has carried the contamination with them, which is why the rule is to stay out of the affected area entirely.

If the backup has affected a room the household uses every day, such as a bathroom or a kitchen, arrange to use other rooms and other facilities until the cleanup is done. If the only bathroom is affected, the household needs another arrangement for the time being, and that is worth sorting out early rather than after the cleanup has started. The affected area should be treated as out of use until a professional has said the cleanup is complete.

Children and pets

Children and pets need particular care after a sewage backup, because they are the most likely to come into contact with the water without understanding the risk. Children play on floors, put their hands in water, and touch their faces. Pets walk through water, drink from puddles, and lick their paws. Both need to be kept out of the affected area completely, not just told to be careful in it. A closed door is better than a warning, and a pet kept in another room is better than a pet watched from the doorway.

Belongings that children and pets use, such as toys, bedding and food bowls, should be kept out of the affected area, and anything that has been in contact with the water should be left for the professional cleanup rather than handled by hand. Homeowners in Mesquite and across the state with young children should treat the affected rooms as closed until the work is done, and should say so plainly to everyone in the house, including visitors.

How to Protect Your Family After a Sewage Backup — Texas water damage guide

What to do with belongings

Belongings in the affected area need care, but not at the cost of contact with the water. Do not wade in to rescue boxes, clothes or electronics, and do not carry wet items through dry rooms, because that spreads contamination. Items that were above the water line and were not splashed may be fine where they are, and a professional can advise on what can be moved and what should be left. Items that have been in contact with sewage are dealt with as part of the cleanup, not salvaged by hand.

Soft furnishings, clothing and toys that have been soaked in sewage are usually not worth trying to save, and they should be left for the cleanup rather than handled. Hard items that can be cleaned may be dealt with later, once the water and the affected materials are out. The priority order is people first, then the structure, then belongings, and that order should not be reversed for the sake of a box of stored items.

Calling a professional

Call a professional as soon as the backup is found, and when you call, say which rooms are affected, how deep the water is, whether it is still coming in, and whether anyone in the house has come into contact with it. That information shapes how urgent the visit is and what the crew brings with them. Stop using water in the house so that no more wastewater is sent into the system, and do not flush toilets or run taps in the affected area until a professional has said it is all right to do so.

While you wait, keep the affected area closed off and keep everyone out of it. Do not start the cleanup yourself, do not use household cleaning equipment on the water, and do not open up the drains to see what is wrong. The water damage restoration page sets out the wider restoration service in general terms, and the sewage cleanup page sets out the specialist service for this kind of loss. The call is the first step, and it is the step that matters most.

Keeping the rest of the house usable

After a sewage backup, the rest of the house needs to keep working while the affected area is out of use, and that takes a little planning. The household needs to know which rooms are closed, which facilities can be used, and where the children's and the pets' essentials have been moved to, so that daily life can carry on in the dry rooms. Meals, sleep and play should happen in the rooms that are not affected, with the wet rooms simply closed off, and the routine should stay as normal as possible in the rooms that are still in use. A household that has a plan for the dry rooms is a household that can wait for the cleanup without the rest of life falling apart.

It also helps to keep the boundary between the affected area and the rest of the house clear. Shoes that have been in the affected area should not be worn through the rest of the house, and hands should be washed after any contact with anything from the affected rooms. The door to the affected area should be kept shut, and the area should not be used as a shortcut to another room. Those are small steps, but they are the steps that keep contamination from spreading, and they are worth taking seriously until a professional has said the cleanup is complete. The call that starts the cleanup is also the call that sets the plan for the household, and the professional who comes will say which rooms are out of use and for how long. Protecting a family after a sewage backup is mostly about keeping people away from the water, and keeping the water from spreading into the rooms where people live. The steps are simple to describe and harder to carry out in a house with children, pets, and a daily routine built around the rooms that are affected, which is why they need to be deliberate rather than left to chance. Closing off the affected area, moving the children's and the pets' essentials to dry rooms, and arranging to use other facilities until the cleanup is done are all practical steps, and together they are what keep a difficult situation from becoming a worse one. The call that starts the cleanup is also the call that sets the plan for the household, and the professional who comes will say which rooms are out of use and for how long, so that the household can plan around the work rather than guessing.

Key Takeaways

The first step after a sewage backup is to keep everyone away from the contaminated water.
Children and pets need particular care after a sewage backup, because they are the most likely to come into contact with the water without understanding the risk.
Belongings in the affected area need care, but not at the cost of contact with the water.
Call a professional as soon as the backup is found, and when you call, say which rooms are affected, how deep the water is, whether it is still coming in, and whether anyone in the house has come into contact with it.
After a sewage backup, the rest of the house needs to keep working while the affected area is out of use, and that takes a little planning.

Your Next Step

If this guide matches what you found at home, the next step is a visit — not a guess. Call and describe what you found, and the visit is arranged from what you describe. The Sewage Cleanup page explains what that service covers, and the flood damage cleanup page explains how flood water is removed and the rooms are dried.

Do not step in standing water near electrical outlets or appliances while you wait, and if water is still coming in, turn off the shut-off valve for that fixture where you can reach it safely.

Keep the guides on this site bookmarked: the first guide, the signs guide, and the preparation guide cover the checks worth repeating — after moving in, and after bringing used appliances home.

Water damage help is available across Texas. See water damage restoration in Government Hill, TX for one local example, or find your town on the service areas page.