(Radio Iowa) – An emergency cleaning and restoration company based in Iowa has experienced a drastic increase in its disinfection services since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Michele Presley with SERVPRO says the company, which serves the entire state, has doubled its workforce since February to help keep up with the demand.  “It was never something that was really on our radar,” she says. “Well now it is our number one service that we’re providing. We’re still doing water, fire and those responses to daily emergencies for people. But this has by far taken over as the number one service.”

She says worked with the Environmental Protection Agency and the C-D-C as the outbreak happened in March to ensure they could properly respond. “We talk about first responders, firemen, policemen, nurses and health care and all of that. But, when businesses need something disinfected, it’s not the firemen who come in and disinfect their building. It’s us,” she says. “And so, we are not only disinfecting police cars, fire trucks and things like that. But we’re disinfecting businesses so that their employees have a safe place to work.”

Presley says SERVPRO has doubled its staff since February and it continues to hire. “We’ve hired additional employees. We’ve hired part-time employees and trained them on how to do it. So yes, we’ve been able to keep up, but we also had to grow our fleet of technicians,” she says. Presley suggests that businesses and customers come up with a contingency plan by thinking ahead of time about what happens if an infected person was at in your building and how much square footage needs to be treated. She says this will help them to know how much the service will cost.