
The Water Damage an Earthquake Causes (And How To Reduce It)
After a significant quake, far more Los Angeles homes are damaged by their own plumbing than by structural failure.
· 8 min read

Glendale, CA · Open 24 hours
Burst pipe, flooded floor, storm runoff or a ceiling that's about to let go? Drycore Restore extracts, dries, treats and rebuilds — one local crew from the first gallon to the last coat of paint.
A real person answers any hour — and you get a real ETA for your address, not a number off a website. 60-minute response in Glendale.
Equipment stays until moisture meters match your home's dry standard.
Daily moisture logs and carrier-format estimates. Most clients pay only their deductible.
One company from the first gallon extracted to the last coat of paint.
What we do
Full-service recovery from the first gallon extracted to the last coat of paint — one crew, one invoice, one point of contact.
Learn moreTruck-mounted units that pull hundreds of gallons an hour — the single highest-impact hour of any water loss.
Learn moreMetered, logged drying that ends when the meters say dry — not when the calendar says it's been three days.
Learn moreThe most common call we get in Glendale — and the one where a fast response saves the most drywall.
Learn moreContained removal under negative pressure — we fix the moisture source too, so it doesn't come back.
Learn moreHillside runoff, debris flow and storm intrusion handled as the contaminated-water events they actually are.
Learn moreBiohazard-grade cleanup and disinfection — handled correctly the first time, with the odor gone for good.
Learn moreEmergency tarping, attic drying and texture-matched ceiling repair that doesn't leave a visible patch.
Learn moreThe part of the house nobody looks at — and the most common source of whole-home humidity and floor rot.
Learn moreThermal and acoustic location of under-slab leaks — pinpointed before anyone breaks concrete.
Learn moreYour belongings inventoried, photographed, cleaned and stored — so the crew can work and nothing gets lost.
Learn moreThe rebuild phase most restoration companies hand off — done in-house, so the job actually finishes.
Learn moreAfter-hours and phased drying that keeps your doors open and your tenants in their units.
Learn moreSoot removal, odor elimination and the water damage the fire department leaves behind — handled together.
Learn moreKitchen and laundry losses where the water hides under cabinets — found, dried and saved without gutting the room.
Learn moreOpenings closed and roofs tarped the same night — stopping the loss from getting bigger while you sort out the rest.
Learn moreHow it works
A person answers, not a voicemail tree, and a stocked truck is dispatched. On arrival we photograph the loss before touching anything, then map it — penetrating and non-penetrating moisture meters plus a thermal imaging camera to find water behind finishes. We classify the water as clean, gray or black, because that decides what can be dried and what has to be removed.
Expert tip: While you wait: shut the water off if you can reach it safely, and kill power to affected rooms at the breaker. Don't run a household vacuum over standing water.
Truck-mounted and portable extraction units pull standing and sub-surface water out of carpet, pad and hard flooring. Containment barriers go up so we aren't pushing humidity into dry parts of the house, and contents get moved or blocked off the wet floor.
Expert tip: Every gallon removed as liquid is a gallon that doesn't need days of equipment time to evaporate. This is the hour where speed genuinely changes the cost.
We calculate what the affected volume actually needs rather than guessing — air mover count from affected linear footage, dehumidification from room volume and the class of loss. Low-grain refrigerant units handle most residential work; desiccant dehumidification comes out for dense materials like plaster, hardwood and concrete slab.
Expert tip: Please don't switch the equipment off overnight. An eight-hour gap lets moisture redistribute and commonly adds a full day.
Every surface that took on water is treated with an EPA-registered antimicrobial, and HEPA air scrubbers run through the drying phase to keep airborne particulate down. Where the water was contaminated, affected porous materials are removed rather than treated — you cannot disinfect the interior of a material you can't reach.
Expert tip: Mold can begin colonising within 24 to 48 hours. Drying inside that window is what prevents a remediation job later.
Equipment comes out when meter readings match the dry standard taken from unaffected areas of your own home — not on a calendar date. Then we rebuild: drywall, texture matching, paint, baseboard, flooring and cabinetry. You keep the complete moisture log.
Expert tip: Keep that log. If a mold question comes up later, or when you sell the house, it's your proof the structure was dried to a recognized standard.
Why Glendale calls us
Our shop is at 749 Portola Ave, Glendale, CA 91206. Crews and equipment are already in the city, which is how we hold a 60-minute response target instead of promising one.
We establish a dry standard from unaffected materials in your own home, then take daily readings until affected materials match. You receive the complete log.
The crew that removed your drywall installs the new one, matches the texture and paints. No handoff, no second estimate, no two-month gap.
Dated photos, moisture maps, daily atmospheric readings and carrier-format line-item estimates. Most clients pay their deductible and nothing more.
In-place drying of hardwood, wall cavities and cabinet runs. Demolition is faster and more profitable — it's also usually unnecessary when we're called early.
Galvanized pipe in Adams Hill, slab leaks in postwar Burbank, hillside runoff above Glenoaks. We arrive with the right equipment because we know the terrain.
Local risk profile
Anything built before about 1960 was plumbed in galvanized steel that corrodes from the inside until a threaded joint fails without warning. Adams Hill, Citrus Grove and the older pockets near downtown are full of it.
Copper run through concrete abrades where it contacts the slab. Hot-water lines fail first, and the damage is well advanced before anyone notices a warm patch on the floor or an unexplained water bill.
Rain landing on the Verdugo and San Rafael slopes travels laterally through the soil and arrives at uphill foundation walls a day or more after the storm — often on a clear day. Surface grading doesn't touch it.
Washing machine hoses, water heaters and dishwashers are the most common residential loss of all. A failed hose delivers roughly six gallons a minute with nothing to stop it.
Glendale sits below slopes that have burned. Scorched ground sheds water instead of absorbing it, so a storm that would have been unremarkable before a fire arrives carrying ash, soil and rock.
Original clay tile joined every few feet gives roots dozens of entry points. The pattern is a backup every year or two, worse in spring, that snaking only defers.
Most water damage claims are underpaid for one of two reasons: the documentation was thin, or the work was described in language the carrier's system doesn't recognize. We solve both.
Every job gets dated photographs before we touch anything, a moisture map, daily atmospheric and material readings, and an equipment log showing exactly what ran and for how long. Estimates are written in the same line-item format carriers use, so an adjuster can approve the scope without a back-and-forth. When they want to inspect, we meet them on site and walk the loss with them.
Because emergency mitigation is a covered obligation under most policies, we start immediately rather than waiting days for approval while your floors keep wicking. On an approved claim, most homeowners pay their deductible and nothing more.
Sudden and accidental damage — a burst supply line, a failed water heater, an overflowing appliance — is covered under most standard California policies. Gradual seepage and rising floodwater generally are not. We review your declarations page with you before anything is filed, and we'll tell you honestly when a loss is small enough that claiming it isn't in your interest.
We don't publish a price list, because anyone quoting a firm number for a water loss before taking a moisture reading is guessing. What we can do is tell you exactly what moves the number:
On-site assessment and estimating is free, and you'll know the scope and the plan before any billable work starts.

When you call +1 (201) 277-9344, you reach people who work in this city. Our base on Portola Avenue sits between the valley floor and the Verdugo foothills, which is exactly the range of properties we spend our days in — 1920s bungalows with galvanized supply lines, postwar slab homes with copper running through the concrete, and hillside houses that take runoff every winter.
That matters more than it sounds. Knowing what fails in which era of Glendale housing means we arrive with leak detection equipment on the first truck instead of scheduling a second visit, and it means we plan hillside access before we dispatch rather than after.
We handle extraction, structural drying, mold remediation and the full rebuild in-house, and we document every reading so your insurance claim moves instead of stalling.
Where we work
91201 · 91202 · 91203
Our home city. Based on Portola Ave with crews covering all nine Glendale ZIP codes around the clock.
91020 · 91214
Foothill bungalows below the Verdugos, where winter runoff and 1920s plumbing are the two recurring problems.
91214 · 91020
Directly below the San Gabriels — the highest debris-flow exposure of anywhere we serve, and we plan for it.
91208
Wooded hillside streets in 91208 where mature landscaping, slope drainage and 1940s plumbing intersect.
91207 · 91206
Glendale's historic showpiece — where restoring the finish correctly matters as much as removing the water.
91205 · 90065
Steep streets and 1920s bungalows in 91205 — challenging access and some of the oldest plumbing in the city.
91206
Canyon-road properties in 91206 where a whole watershed drains past your foundation every winter.
91020 · 91208
A close-knit foothill pocket between Montrose and the Verdugos, with a distinctly postwar failure profile.
91501 · 91502 · 91504
Twelve minutes west — dense postwar housing, studio-adjacent commercial space and a lot of aging slab plumbing.
91101 · 91103 · 91104
Craftsman and Revival architecture where the finishes are the value — and demolition-first restoration destroys it.
91011 · 91012
Large properties on canyon drainages below the San Gabriels — bigger homes, bigger losses, higher stakes.
90041
Craftsman and Spanish bungalows just over the Glendale line, with a lot of original plumbing still in service.
90039
Flat river-adjacent blocks in 90039 where the water table sits high and the housing is nearly a century old.
91042 · 91043
Wash-adjacent foothill living at the mouth of Big Tujunga Canyon — real storm exposure, every winter.
91040
Large-lot foothill living where equestrian properties, older ranch homes and seasonal runoff meet.
91001
Directly under the San Gabriels, with the region's most acute fire-then-flood cycle and a lot of old, beautiful housing.
91030
A small city of protected historic housing where careful, reversible restoration work is the only acceptable approach.
90026 · 90039
Some of the steepest residential lots in Los Angeles, with cantilevered mid-century homes and difficult access.
91601 · 91602 · 91605
Dense multi-family housing and mixed-use buildings where a single failure becomes four units' problem.
91602 · 91505
Established, high-finish homes near the river where discretion and material salvage matter as much as speed.
91040
Horse country on the edge of the city — big lots, barns, septic systems and drainage that has to cross a lot of ground.
91342
Directly beneath burned canyon slopes, next to the largest flood control basin in the city.
91342
The valley's northern edge, on an alluvial fan below the San Gabriels — and full of housing built in one seismic era.
91340 · 91341
A dense independent city of older housing — where a single leak often affects a main house, a converted garage and a neighbor.
91024
The steepest of the foothill towns — narrow canyon streets, irreplaceable historic housing and serious debris flow exposure.
91016
One of the largest concentrations of pre-1940 housing in the San Gabriel Valley, sitting under a canyon that has burned.
91010
A narrow strip between the mountains and the San Gabriel River — postwar slabs below, canyon drainage above.
91702
Built at the mouth of San Gabriel Canyon — the largest drainage in the range discharges past this city.
91740 · 91741
The city that literally wrote the textbook on post-fire debris flow — and the one place we plan hardest for it.
91773
Canyon drainage above, a reservoir below, and a housing stock just now hitting the age where slab plumbing fails.
91750
Two cities in one — a compact historic core built for citrus, and hillside estates below Marshall Canyon.
91711
A city of very old trees and very old housing — which is precisely why the sewer laterals keep failing.
91352
Our closest Valley neighbor — a working mix of warehouses, older tract homes and the Tujunga Wash cutting through it.
91604 · 91602
Two neighborhoods in one — flat 1940s tracts north of Ventura, and cantilevered hillside homes climbing south into the canyons.
91607
Small, dense and heavily treed — where one upstairs supply line routinely becomes three tenants' problem.
91403 · 91423 · 91401
Hillside estates to the south, dense condos and postwar flats to the north, and the Sepulveda Basin at the western edge.
91401 · 91405 · 91406
The centre of the Valley — the widest mix of housing, commercial and industrial property of anywhere we serve.
91402
A planned postwar community built almost all at once — which means its plumbing is now failing almost all at once.
91331
Small lots, big households — where one leak routinely reaches a main house, a converted garage and a back unit.
91331
One of the Valley's oldest communities, built along a wash that has been carrying mountain runoff since long before the channel.
91345
Quiet, established and built around the oldest structure in the Valley — with Bull Creek running along its edge.
91343
Dense, mixed and heavily multi-family — where the building type matters more than the address.
91316 · 91436
Estate lots south of Ventura where the drying system has to be calculated, not estimated — and the finishes are the whole cost.
91335
Flat, hot and built almost entirely in one decade — with air conditioning that runs half the year and drains that clog.
91324 · 91325 · 91326
A neighborhood substantially rebuilt after 1994 — which means two very different construction eras behind the same walls.
91344
Climbing into the Santa Susanas — larger lots, real slope, and a stretch of Balboa with its own seismic history.
91356 · 91335
Hillside lots south of Ventura, a working medical district in the middle, and postwar flats to the north.
91306
About as uniform as tract housing gets — which makes what fails here highly predictable, and worth getting ahead of.
91303 · 91304
One of the west Valley's oldest townsites, layered with dense apartment development and backing onto Warner Center.
91364 · 91367
The hottest corner of the Valley, with estate homes climbing into a very high fire severity zone.
91311
The Valley's northwest corner — sandstone outcrops, horse property, canyon runoff and a large industrial base.
90065
Ten minutes from our shop — steep northeast LA streets above, flat river-adjacent ground below.
90065
Where the Arroyo Seco meets the LA River — permeable ground, old housing and a working industrial edge.
90042
One of LA's densest concentrations of Victorian and Craftsman housing — and a neighborhood mid-renovation, opening walls constantly.
90065 · 90042
Some of the steepest residential ground in Los Angeles — where getting equipment to the water is half the job.
90027 · 90039
Architecturally significant estates in the hills, 1920s courtyard apartments in the flats, Griffith Park above both.
90026
Steep, dense and full of houses reached only by public stairway — plus one of LA's finest Victorian districts.
90031
The oldest neighborhood in Los Angeles — which means the oldest plumbing, and a lot of it still in service.
90032
Rolling northeast LA hills with older housing, big families and a lot of lots carrying more than one home.
90033
Dense, historic and heavily multi-generational — one of the oldest continuously lived-in parts of the city.
90022 · 90063
Unincorporated county territory — which changes the permit process on every reconstruction we do here.
90028 · 90038 · 90068
A dense stock of 1920s apartment buildings with ninety-year-old cast iron in the walls — plus commercial space that can't afford to close.
90046 · 90068
Canyon roads, cantilevered houses and a very high fire severity zone — the most access-constrained work we do.
90012 · 90013 · 90014
High-rise commercial, century-old adaptive reuse lofts and Arts District warehouses — the largest-scale work we do.
90005 · 90006 · 90010
The densest residential neighborhood in the county — where one failure can reach more households than anywhere else we work.
90057 · 90026
One of the oldest and densest concentrations of pre-1940 apartment housing anywhere in Los Angeles.
90006 · 90015
Surviving Victorian blocks inside one of the densest neighborhoods in the city — old materials, high occupancy.
90019 · 90036 · 90010
Miracle Mile offices, Art Deco apartment buildings and period single-family — plus ground that seeps tar.
What our neighbors say
“My Family and I experienced a pipe burst in our wall a few weeks ago, we called Drycore and they came out to dry and disinfect everything for us. This was the first time that we had any issues like this, the staff came to our house and was very professional throughout the whole process.”
“I used Drycore to repair water damage in my bathroom and laundry room. They have been very responsive, accommodating and professional. I'm pleased with their work so far and am looking forward to having my vanity installed. I highly recommend them.”
“Called this company for a burst pipe in my kitchen. They responded very quickly and came out immediately. Highly recommend them for any water damage services.”
5.0 average from 3 Google reviews
Read them on our Google Business ProfileRestoration knowledge

After a significant quake, far more Los Angeles homes are damaged by their own plumbing than by structural failure.
· 8 min read

If the smell returns on warm days, nothing was removed — something was covered. Odor is a material problem, not an air problem.
· 8 min read

Two rules, both counterintuitive, both time-critical: freeze the paper, and don't turn the electronics on.
· 8 min read
Get help now
Tell us what happened. We'll call you back — usually within minutes, any hour.
Monday – Sunday · Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
Common questions
We dispatch 24 hours a day, every day, and target arrival within 60 minutes anywhere in Glendale. Our base is at 749 Portola Ave, so crews and equipment are already in the city rather than coming from across the county. Call +1 (201) 277-9344 and we'll give you a real ETA plus the steps to take before we arrive.
Shut off the water at the source or at the main if you can reach it safely. Kill power to affected rooms at the breaker if water is near outlets. Photograph everything before you move anything — those pre-cleanup photos matter most to your adjuster. Then lift what you can off the floor and call us. Don't use a household vacuum on water and don't run your central HVAC if any part of the duct system got wet.
Structural drying typically runs three to five days for a standard residential loss, longer for dense materials like plaster, hardwood or concrete slab. Reconstruction depends on scope — a single room of drywall, texture and paint takes a few days after drying, while flooring and cabinetry can run two to six weeks, mostly driven by material lead times. We give you a schedule after the initial moisture mapping, not before.
Yes. We document every job with dated photos, moisture maps, daily atmospheric and material readings and equipment logs, and we write estimates in the line-item format carriers use. We meet your adjuster on site, and we begin emergency mitigation immediately rather than waiting days for approval while your floors keep wicking. Most homeowners on an approved claim pay their deductible and nothing more.
Sudden and accidental water damage — a burst supply line, a failed water heater, an overflowing appliance — is covered under most standard California policies, including the resulting damage to floors, walls and contents. Gradual seepage from a leak that went unaddressed for months is generally excluded, and rising floodwater from outside the home requires separate flood insurance. We review your declarations page with you before anything is filed.
We measure it. Before drying starts we establish a dry standard by taking moisture readings from the same materials in an unaffected part of your home. Then we dry the affected materials back to match that number, taking daily readings until they do. Equipment comes out when the meters say dry, not when the calendar says it's been three days — and you receive the complete moisture log at the end.
Usually yes. Air movers are roughly as loud as a bathroom fan and dehumidifiers hum continuously, so it's noticeable but livable, and most clients stay put. We recommend relocating when the affected area includes a primary bedroom, when the water was contaminated, or when someone in the household has asthma or a compromised immune system. Please don't switch equipment off overnight — an eight-hour gap can add a full day to the job.
Both, and it's a deliberate choice. The same company that documented the loss and removed the materials installs the new drywall, matches the texture, paints, sets the baseboard, lays the flooring and reinstalls cabinetry. That eliminates the gap where most restoration jobs stall — the point where a mitigation crew leaves and you spend two months trying to get a separate contractor to put your walls back.
All of Glendale including Montrose, Verdugo Woodlands, Rossmoyne, Adams Hill, Chevy Chase Canyon and Sparr Heights, plus La Crescenta, Burbank, Pasadena, South Pasadena, La Cañada Flintridge, Altadena, Eagle Rock, Atwater Village, Silver Lake, North Hollywood, Toluca Lake, Sunland and Tujunga. If you're not sure whether we cover your street, call and ask.
No. On-site assessment and estimating is free, including moisture inspections when you suspect a hidden problem but aren't certain. You'll know the scope and the plan before any billable work begins.
Call now for 24/7 emergency response across Glendale and the surrounding foothill communities. Free on-site assessment, direct insurance billing, and crews that finish the job.
Licensed, bonded & insured · We bill your insurance carrier directly · 24/7 Emergency Service