Local cleaning service evolves in the time of COVID-19

SERVPRO of Texarkana is all about cleaning, and the coronavirus has them doing it at an even deeper level.

The company’s primary mission is cleaning and disinfecting real estate, home, business and other places, like churches, said owner Melissa Burkett.

“We are about biological sanitation and decontamination,” she said. “When COVID came up, that turned into a natural extension of what we do anyway. We follow CDC (Centers for Disease Control) guidelines and generally have three levels of cleaning. Our precautionary cleanings take about 30 minutes, and are idea for, say, a business, church or the like reopening again to the public. This is a good preemptive measure.”

SERVPRO offers deeper cleanings, too, that can vary in time taken to apply, depending mainly on the size of the property being decontaminated.

“Our approach involves a

decontaminating fog, combined with hand decontamination of all hard and frequently touched surfaces,” she said.

Most often, SERVPRO is called to do precautionary treatments.

“We can deal with a wide variety of contaminants, not just COVID,” she said. “As an example, Randy Sams (Outreach Shelter) is a regular client. We go through on a regular basis and make sure flu is not a problem there, but this also works against a variety of other biological nastiness.”

She says her company provides the service free to them as a community service.

Burkett opened her business because after accompanying her husband, a retired Navy veteran, to Texarkana she decided she wanted to try something different.

She previously had a title holding business and dabbled in restoring real estate.

“But when we got here just after the ‘08 market downturn, considering it was real estate-based, coming into a new market under those conditions, trying to get a new business in those fields under those conditions just did not work,” she said. “So while investigating other possibilities, I helped a friend in another town get a SERVPRO business going. When they managed to both pay me back and get out of debt in five years, I decided I had found my business.”

(SERVPRO is located at 830 Redwater Road in Wake Village. Visit them on Facebook or online at servprotexarkana.com. Phone: 903832-4400.)

Staff photo by Junius Stone ■ SERVPRO of Texarkana is doing a job at First Baptist Church, Moores Lane. SERVPRO is capable of sanitation and decontamination operations as large as that church or as small as a house.