It may be days, if not weeks, before we get a clear picture of the damage wrought in Central Texas by the catastrophic flooding over the weekend.
From Kerrville to Georgetown, people whose homes flooded are picking up the pieces, including damaged precious family treasures. If you are in that position, there are some things that you might be able to try before you throw away any prized possessions.
Rebecca Elder, an adjunct professor at UT Austin’s School of Information and a cultural heritage preservation consultant, said some belongings might not be too far gone to save.
“Things are often more salvageable than you imagine, but if you throw them away, they’re gone forever,” she said. “So the most important thing to do first is work safely. Always, when you’re dealing with things that have been in a flood, wear nitrile gloves and an N95 mask to protect yourself. But, after that, get things dry as quickly as you can.”
If you have too much going on to focus on drying precious possessions, Elder said you can put them in the freezer.
“If you put them in a freezer, they can just sit there for as long as you need to let them sit there,” she said. “And you can take them out and dry them later when things are less hectic.”
» MORE: How to help people affected by the floods, and how to find help
Elder said using heat to dry things out is often counterproductive.
“I don’t think it speeds things up tremendously, and for some things it’s going to do damage,” she said. “But your freezer is going to be a very good friend.”
Elder said many people would be surprised by how many paper goods can come back from water damage.
“I would be very optimistic and I would probably save a lot of things even if they look like they might have some damage,” she said. “Things that I would not save include photographs, particularly color photographs, where colors have run. We’re not going to be able to bring those back. But most actually have a good chance, especially if they are paper and photo based.”
When it comes to prioritizing what items to get looked at by a professional first, Elder said anything that is water-soluble probably needs a quick response.
“Perhaps a magic marker drawing that a child made that’s very precious to you – because that media is water-soluble, it’s very likely to get damaged very quickly and that magic marker will bleed,” she said. “Color photos are fragile, and we tend to look at those quickly. Scrapbooks are worrisome because they have so many kinds of materials in them.”
» MORE: Complete coverage of deadly flooding in the Texas Hill Country
For big family collections – like an entire house of stuff – Elder recommends focusing on the items that are the most sentimental. For example, she said yearbooks and other printed photo books need special treatment because they are printed on coated paper, which is called that because it is coated with clay to make the photos look good. When it gets wet, the clay melts and sticks to itself.
“If you have clay-coated paper on something that really matters to you, the best thing to do would be rinse it in clean water, keep it wet and get it in a freezer, and wait a very long time, like a year or maybe even two,” Elder said. “The ice that forms inside the book is going to sublimate, which is when the solid form goes to the gaseous form without passing through the liquid form. So over time, if you wait long enough, it will dry.
“And when you put it in the freezer, the way it looks going in is how it’s going to look coming out. So take a little time to get it as squared up as you can.”
These free email helplines are available to answer specific questions:
- The UT School of Information, which includes preservation experts like Elder, can be reached at response@ischool.utexas.edu.
- The National Heritage Responders, volunteer conservators and collections care professionals from all over the country who respond after disasters, can be reached at nhrpublichelpline@culturalheritage.org.
If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it here. Your gift helps pay for everything you find on texasstandard.org and KUT.org. Thanks for donating today.
