Board Up Service in Orange County, CA

A board up service secures every opening the fire made or widened. Broken windows and glass doors are closed with panels fixed to the frame, a garage window or a side door included. Roof openings get a tarp until a roofer can repair them. The crew photographs each opening before and after, so the insurer sees what the fire did and what was done about it. Board-up is temporary protection, not a repair: glass replacement and a new roof belong to the rebuild, and the crew says so when a roofer or glazier is needed.

Stay out until the fire department says the building is safe to enter, and do not reconnect utilities yourself; Ready.gov gives both instructions. Call your insurer, because the California Department of Insurance tells policyholders to start there. Photograph what you can see from outside, and keep every receipt for money spent because of the fire. Once the building is released, call the number on this page and describe the openings.

Southern California has 10 to 25 Santa Ana wind events a year, mostly in autumn and lasting one to seven days, and wind pulls at every loose tarp and panel. The Orange County Fire Authority alone handled 183,165 calls in 2025 from 78 stations, so the trucks move on to the next call and the owner is left with the opening. Access shapes the job too. Balboa Island in Newport Beach is reached by one two-lane bridge, and a hillside street in Anaheim Hills, the master-planned community laid out from 1971, changes what goes on the truck, so the first call covers the address and the approach.

The estimate is free and is written before work is agreed. The number and size of the openings set most of the cost, followed by the height of a roof opening and the pitch of the roof. A glass door costs more to close than a small window, and a building that needs panels held for weeks costs more than one that is repaired quickly. No figure is quoted by phone.

1. The first call covers the address, where the openings are and whether the fire department has released the building. 2. The crew arrives the same day when the building is open. 3. Each opening is photographed. 4. Windows and doors are closed and roof openings are tarped. 5. You receive the photos and a note of what was closed, for the insurer. 6. Cleanup starts when the building is released, with the same crew.

"Part of our roof needed to be covered after the fire. I was worried about leaving the house exposed, so getting a tarp in place took some pressure off. The crew also explained what they could handle next." Nicole Silva, 2026. "Our garage window was broken during the fire, and getting it boarded up was the first thing on my mind. The crew took care of that and gave us the rundown on the rest of the cleanup." Brian Torres, 2006. Two of 9 reviews from 2006 to 2026.

Board up service is available across Orange County, and the larger areas have their own pages: Santa Ana, Irvine, Anaheim, Garden Grove and Orange. The rest of the county is listed under All service areas.

After the building is secure the next job is Fire damage cleanup, and the whole first day is laid out in the House fire cleanup guide. Water from the hoses is covered under Water damage after fire.