FIRE DAMAGE 25 PIANOS !

[Zen Reinhardt]

Hi Marcel --

About 4 years ago a dealer I worked for received a call about a DC3
Disklavier that had been in a fire.  A technician had been asked to go look
at it right after the fire and reported that it still worked.  For some
reason, the insurance company decided it was a total loss and granted the
family enough money to replace it with a then-state-of-the-art DC3 Mark II.
 The old one was returned to the dealer where it was cleaned up and sold to
another family.  The only problem reported was that the remote control
capabilities did not work.  Since I didn't see the piano before the fire, I
don't know whether or not this was a problem because of the fire or if it
was a pre-existing condition.

About a year ago I came to another Yamaha grand (a G1R) that had been
exposed to a lot of smoke from a kitchen fire.  Don't asked what happened,
because by the time I was asked to look at it a couple of months after the
fact, there was no sign that anything had happened.  There was no hint of
the smell of smoke in the action or anywhere else for that matter.

You might want to contact the people at Customer Service at Yamaha about
your 25 charges -- they might have some insights from previous reports of
pianos near fires and I'm sure they would be interested in hearing about
what you find with your situation.  They can be contacted at 800 854 1569.

ZR!  RPT
Ann Arbor  MI
diskladame@provide.net

----------
> From: Marcel Carey <mcpiano@microtec.net>
> To: pianotech@ptg.org
> Subject: FIRE DAMAGE 25 PIANOS !
> Date: Wednesday, October 29, 1997 7:52 PM
> 
> Just as I came back from doing house calls today, I had a very disturbing
> message on my answering machine. There was a fire just downstairs from
the
> music department at the university where I just had finished tuning all
27
> pianos during the fall break.
> 
> I have to go and evaluate the dammages tomorrow morning. From what I was
> told, there was only smoke... but I suspect heat as well. There are about
20
> UF-1, 2 disklavier (G-2) 1 C-3 and 2 C6-F.
> 
> What scares the hell out of me is _NOT_ knowing what are the long term
> effect of smoke on strings and Electronics components of the disklaviers.
> Have any of you been confronted with such a situation? Should I just
quote
> an estimate for cleaning and tuning (I suspect the heat will have trown
my
> tunings out), or should I leave a doubt in my estimate as far as the long
> term problems that could develop in the years to come. I think mainly of
> soundboard integrity; can the heat affect the glue joints? Is there a way
to
> find out at this stage or will I just have to wait and then after all the
> insurance claims are over, in 2 or 3 years come back to them and then
admit
> that I was wrong and that the pianos all need new soundboards.
> 
> Please, I need feedback.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Marcel Carey, RPT 
>