When Clean Care of New England President Ernest Pullano started a Providence carpet-cleaning business in 1984, red wine on a light shag carpet qualified as a major cleanup.
Now 27 years and countless floods, fires and mold infestations later, Pullano and his company are at home during significantly larger catastrophes, like the floods that left sizable portions of Warwick and Cranston underwater last year.
“We are actually putting peoples’ lives back together,” Pullano said.
Over the last few decades, Clean Care has grown and evolved along with the disaster- remediation industry thanks to steady advances in cleanup technology and a greater awareness in society about the dangers of moisture in buildings.
In July Clean Care moved from Warwick into a new 30,000-square-foot building in Cranston and the company is now expanding its reach for the first time beyond Rhode Island into Connecticut and Massachusetts.
“When I started there was very limited technology for drying and dehumidification,” Pullano said. “As the business has progressed, it has become more specialized, especially with the heightened awareness of mold and sick-building syndrome.”
New technology now allows Clean Care to rescue buildings from not just water, but fire, soot, mold, mildew and sewage leaks.
Central to the company’s growth has been the acquisition of equipment to deal with all kinds of disasters and all aspects of a disaster, including clients’ prized possessions and clothing.
In its new Cranston headquarters, Clean Care has ultrasonic equipment to clean electronics and computers plus a specialized laundry unit for cleaning soft goods from designer clothing to bedding. It has the latest in anti-microbial chemicals to deal with mold growth.
The new headquarters also has a climate-controlled storage facility to keep possessions while a building is being restored and an 82-person classroom space used to educate clients and host large meetings.
For jobs in office buildings or other large structures, Clean Care has truck-mounted drying units that roll right up to the side of a water-damaged building and remove the water.
Although simple water leaks, basement flooding, pipe breaks and boiler backups represent the bulk of the calls to Clean Care, Pullano said the big jobs are the ones that really stick in his memory.
“That was very difficult just because of the sheer magnitude of the damage,” Pullano said.
Another tough job was the cleanup of Lincoln High School after a fire in the gymnasium that took place on a Friday and needed to be cleaned up and made safe for children by the first-period bell the following Monday morning.
“We had [more than] 60,000 square feet that had to be cleaned up in two days,” Pullano said. “We had to erect ramps and change means of access, isolate the burnt sections and make sure from an aesthetic standpoint it was all right for school. We worked around the clock.”
But as Pullano points out when asked what interests him about the disaster business, cleaning up after a flood or fire is more than just physical labor, it involves helping people often dazed and disoriented by a catastrophe.
“When you respond to a loss, you have to have some sort of compassion and not just be in pure business mode,” Pullano said. “When we get to a loss, a client’s castle is damaged and we are dealing with everyone’s worldly possessions and no matter what the monetary value is, we have to go in and try to restore their personal belongings to the way they were before the loss.”
As for what the most difficult part of responding to disasters is, Pullano said it’s doing the inevitable cost-benefit analysis involved in trying to determine what makes sense to restore and what should be written off.
“The biggest challenge in any loss is ascertaining a cost-versus-value approach on what makes the most sense to restore and what will minimize remediation and drying plans and indemnify both the owner and insured,” Pullano said.
Clean Care plans to open a Boston office to serve Suffolk County, Mass., by the end of December and plans to open a Connecticut branch within three months. •COMPANY PROFILE
Clean Care of New England
OWNER: Ernest Pullano
TYPE OF BUSINESS: isaster cleanup and restoration
LOCATION: 805 Wellington Ave., Cranston
EMPLOYEES: 30
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1984
ANNUAL SALES: WND
