Raf Volkov

How 911 Storm Started

Greenwich, Connecticut has roughly 60,000 residents and one of the highest per-capita densities of historic and high-end residential property in the United States. Belle Haven, Round Hill, backcountry Greenwich, Old Greenwich waterfront — these aren't ordinary housing stock. They're stone foundations, plaster walls, slate roofs, and 100-year-old framing, often with multi-million-dollar interiors above them.

When water gets into one of those properties, the standard national-chain playbook fails immediately. A scripted call center can't dispatch the right equipment for an estate-scale basement. A franchise tech who has never seen lath-and-plaster walls will tear into them with the same approach they'd use on tract-home drywall. And by the time the right crew finally arrives, the moisture has migrated into framing that will be expensive — and slow — to dry.

I started 911 Storm in 2003 specifically to solve that gap. The model has always been local, owner-operated, fast on the call, IICRC-trained on the work, and direct-billed to the carrier so the homeowner isn't fighting a claims process during what is already the worst week of their year.

What I actually do on a job

I'm not a back-office founder. On nearly every loss we handle, I'm on the first inspection — usually within 60 minutes of the call. I run the moisture mapping personally, decide the dry-down strategy, set the equipment, and stay involved through clearance. On the harder cases (chronic mold, post-fire smoke odor, sewage backups, multi-floor losses) I'm on site daily.

That hands-on involvement is the single biggest difference between us and a 2,000-franchise national chain. The chain's strength is brand recognition. Their weakness is that nobody who answers your call will ever see your home. Ours is the opposite: same person who picks up the phone walks your basement two hours later.

Why the certifications matter

The IICRC — Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification — publishes the standards that every legitimate insurance adjuster references when they scope a water, mold, or fire loss. S500 for water. S520 for mold. S700 for fire and smoke. If your contractor isn't working to a published standard, you can't tell whether the job was done correctly until something goes wrong six months later.

We layer additional manufacturer certifications on top of that base — Goldmorr's mycotoxin protocol for chronic-exposure cases, EZ Breathe for basement ventilation that actually prevents recurrence, Stego/ASTM E1643 for vapor-barrier encapsulation in below-grade environments. These aren't marketing badges. Each one is a multi-day exam and an annual cost. They're on the wall because we use them on real jobs.

What "field supervisor" means here

On every job we run, one person owns the outcome. That's the field supervisor — and on the great majority of our work, that's me. The supervisor sees the first wet floor, signs off on the drying plan, monitors the equipment runs, calls the clearance, and verifies the rebuild matches the pre-loss condition. There's no handoff between estimating and field, no diffusion of responsibility between a sales rep and a tech you've never met. One person, one job, one accountable signature.

That's how it's been since 2003 and it's how it will stay.