Carwashes Get Busy in Aftermath of Fire

THE REGION —  Persuading the crew of a firefighting helicopter to drop the contents of a 150-gallon “Bambi bucket” onto your car would be the fastest way to get rid of the ash and debris from the wildfires that can potentially scar the finish of your vehicle.

Or you could take it to one of the carwashes in the San Gabriel Valley, which have been working overtime cleaning soot off cars.

“We’re really busy,” said John Jarosz, who manages Fasching’s All-Cloth Car Wash in Arcadia.

“We were busy all weekend, and today we’re starting off busier than normal,” he said on Monday.

All the lanes of his carwash were filled with vehicles ranging from family station wagons to an Arcadia police car.

“Generally, any time something like this happens, you get this, ‘Get this off my car’ panic,” Jarosz said.

If ash and soot stay on a car’s finish for too long, they can scar the paint, he added.

“It’s good to wash it off as soon as you can, as acids in the ash could discolor or disfigure the paint,” Jarosz said.

Scientifically speaking, any discoloration would actually be caused by the alkaline in the ash, not acids, said Margret Shimabukuro, a chemistry lab technician at Cal Poly Pomona.

“The ash is a potassium carbonate compound. It’s caustic, a little bit like Drano,” Shimabukuro said.

“If dew or water makes it moist, it becomes alkaline and will eat at the paint a bit. The best thing to do is to hose it off, or wipe it off once it’s stopped falling,” she said.

Make sure the car gets a thorough scrubbing, Shimabukuro said. Just spraying water on the finish could do more damage than good.

“If you just get the car wet, it’s just going to leave little spots all over the paint,” she said.

Washing and then covering your vehicle is probably the safest way to prevent any paint damage, said Randy Hines, president of Jim’s Body Works in San Gabriel.

He echoed Shimabukuro’s warning against simply spraying water on the ash without physically washing it off the car.

“If you get it wet, the ash will stick, and then the sun will come out and bake it in,” he said.

John Gorman, the detail manager of the Walnut Hill Car Wash in Pasadena, had a different opinion. He said the ash falling on automobiles should cause no problems.

“Plain ash on your car is not going to affect anything,” Gorman said. “I live in Altadena myself, and my car is covered with soot, but I don’t think it will affect it.”

“If flames are roaring toward your house, you’re not going to be too concerned about your car anyway,” he concluded.