Water Damage Guides · Water Damage Guides

Water Damage in a Home with Children or Pets: Safety First

A water loss in a home with children or pets needs a different kind of care from the same loss in a home of adults alone. Children play on floors, put their hands in water, and touch their faces. Pets walk through water, drink from puddles, and lick their paws. Neither understands the risk in standing water, and neither can be told to be careful and left to it. The safety steps after a water loss have to be built around that fact.

📞 Call Now — (888) 855-7081 All Water Damage Services

✓ Written for Texas homeowners
✓ Visit first, then a plan
✓ Call to arrange a visit

This guide sets out those steps in general terms: keeping children and pets away from standing and contaminated water, staying out of flooded buildings, and calling a professional. It gives no health advice beyond avoiding contact with contaminated water. For the service that deals with the loss itself, the water damage restoration page sets out what is offered in general terms.

Keep children away from standing water

Children should be kept away from standing water entirely, not just told not to play in it. A child who is told to stay out of a wet room will still go in for a toy, or to see what is happening, and a child who walks through water in socks will carry it into the rest of the house. The practical step is to close the affected rooms off, keep the doors shut, and arrange for the children to use other rooms until the cleanup is done. If the affected room is a bedroom, the child needs another room to sleep in for the time being.

Children should also be kept away from the cleanup itself, and from the equipment used in it. The work area is not a place for a child to watch, and the belongings being moved out of a wet room are not things for a child to handle. If the water was sewage or floodwater, the rule is stricter still: the water is Category 3, treated as a health hazard, and the affected area should be treated as closed until a professional has said the cleanup is complete.

Pets and contaminated water

Pets need the same care as children, for similar reasons. A dog or a cat will walk through standing water without hesitating, drink from a puddle, and lick its paws afterwards. A pet that has been through contaminated water carries that contamination on its fur and paws, and into the rest of the house, onto furniture and bedding. The practical step is to keep pets out of the affected area completely, in another room with the door shut, or with a neighbour or a friend if the affected area covers most of the house.

Pets also need to be kept away from the cleanup and from any belongings that have been in the water. A food bowl, a bed or a toy that has been in sewage or floodwater should be left for the professional cleanup rather than handled, and a pet should not be given water from a tap in the affected area until a professional has said it is all right to use the water again. Homeowners in Fort Worth and across the state with pets should treat the affected rooms as closed to animals as well as to children.

Water Damage in a Home with Children or Pets: Safety First — Texas water damage guide

What to do first

What to do first after a water loss in a home with children or pets is to get the children and the pets out of the affected area, close it off, and then call a professional. Do not enter a flooded building, and do not handle electrics in or near standing water. If water is near electrics, stay out and call for help, and shut off water or power only if it is safe to do so from a dry place, never by wading in. When you call, say that children or pets live in the house, because that shapes how urgent the visit is.

While you wait, keep the affected area closed and keep everyone out of it. Do not start the cleanup yourself, and do not use household equipment on the water, especially where the water was sewage or floodwater. Move the children's and the pets' essentials, such as food, bedding and medication, to a dry room before the cleanup starts, so that the household can carry on normally in the rooms that are not affected.

Talking to children about the damage

Children notice when a house is wet, when rooms are closed off, and when strangers are working in the home, and they need a plain explanation in words they can understand. Say that water has come into the house where it should not be, that some rooms are closed while the water is dealt with, and that the people who have come are there to fix it. Do not go into detail about what the water may carry, and do not let children watch the cleanup or handle wet belongings.

It also helps to keep the children's routine as normal as possible in the rooms that are not affected: meals, sleep and play in the dry rooms, with the wet rooms simply out of use. If the loss is large, or if the family needs to stay elsewhere while the work is done, say so plainly and early, rather than leaving it until the last moment. A sewage cleanup visit covers the most serious kind of water loss, and the safety steps in this guide apply most strictly where sewage or floodwater is involved.

After the work is done

After the work is done, the house needs to be watched, not just used as normal. The affected rooms should be checked in the weeks that follow for the signs that moisture is still present or that growth has started: a musty smell that returns when the room is closed up, a stain that spreads or darkens, paint that bubbles or peels in the same place, and a wall or floor that stays damp to the touch. The rooms around the affected area should be checked too, because water and moisture spread further than the visible damage usually suggests, and a problem can appear in a room that was not part of the original loss.

Children and pets can use the rooms again once a professional has said the work is complete, and the household can return to its normal routine, but the watching should go on for a while. If any of the signs appear, arrange a visit rather than waiting to see whether they clear up on their own, because early attention is easier to deal with than a problem that has had weeks to spread. It also helps to keep the record of the loss, with the photos, the notes and the readings, in one place, because the record is what shows what was done, and it is useful if a question comes up later. The work is finished when the property is dry and the signs are gone, and the watching is what confirms it. A home with children or pets is a home where safety after a water loss needs more care, not less, because children and pets are the most likely to come into contact with standing water without understanding the risk. The care is practical rather than complicated: closing off the affected rooms, keeping the doors shut, moving the children's and the pets' essentials to dry rooms, and arranging for the household to carry on normally in the rooms that are not affected. Those steps are worth taking deliberately, rather than leaving them to chance, because a child who is told to stay out of a wet room will still go in for a toy, and a pet that is watched from a doorway will still walk through the water. A closed door is better than a warning, and a pet kept in another room is better than a pet watched from the doorway, and the household that plans for the dry rooms is a household that can wait for the cleanup without the rest of life falling apart.

Key Takeaways

Children should be kept away from standing water entirely, not just told not to play in it.
Pets need the same care as children, for similar reasons.
What to do first after a water loss in a home with children or pets is to get the children and the pets out of the affected area, close it off, and then call a professional.
Children notice when a house is wet, when rooms are closed off, and when strangers are working in the home, and they need a plain explanation in words they can understand.
After the work is done, the house needs to be watched, not just used as normal.

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 Water Damage Restoration 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 Horizon City, TX for one local example, or find your town on the service areas page.