Stored Belongings Soaked by Storm Water in Snellville

Which items are usually worth trying to save?

Hard goods and some textiles, when the water was clean and the item was moved quickly.

Survival depends on what the item is made of and what the water carried with it. A sealed plastic tote that held water-resistant gear can be rinsed and dried in an afternoon. A cotton quilt that sat in the same water for a night usually cannot be saved to its original state, however carefully it is treated.

The practical test is simple. An item that is hard, non-porous and was in clean water is a good candidate. An item that is porous, soft or was in mud is a candidate only if the owner values it enough to pay for specialist cleaning, and that decision is made after the items have been sorted rather than before.

• Hard plastic, metal tools and sealed ceramics, rinsed and dried
• Upholstery and rugs that have been fully extracted and dried in a ventilated room
• Clothing and linens that can be laundered in water suited to the fabric
• Solid wood furniture whose joints have not swollen or lifted

Why do papers and photographs need their own treatment?

Because wet paper bonds to its neighbors quickly and ink and emulsion do not hold up under long soaking.

A stack of papers that sits in water for even a short time begins to fuse. Pulling the sheets apart while they are still wet tears the fibers and takes the printing with them, so the first rule is that nothing is pried apart in a hurry. The stack is kept as a block, moved flat and handled as little as possible.

Photographs follow the same logic with a different failure. A print in a paper sleeve can stick to the sleeve and to the print beside it, and a wet negative or slide can lose its image within hours. The owner is advised to leave bonded prints where they are and to ask a conservator about them, rather than trying to save them at the kitchen table.

What does a Georgia summer do to the drying?

It slows the drying and speeds the mildew, so a closed room is the wrong place for wet goods.

A garage in July holds moisture for longer than a dry house would, because the air is already close to saturated and the closed door keeps it that way. Fans and a dehumidifier can pull water out of the items, but only if the air they are working in is allowed to move. A sealed room with wet cartons in it becomes a mildew chamber within a day or two.

For that reason the drying is set up in a room with a door that can be opened, with air movers pointed across the goods rather than at them, and with a dehumidifier that is emptied on a schedule. The items are turned over at intervals so that the bottom face is not left to sit against the floor.

• Set the goods on racks or pallets, never directly on carpet or concrete
• Point fans across the surfaces so the air crosses every face
• Run a dehumidifier and log the water it removes each day
• Turn cartons and bins over so that no face stays in contact with a wet surface

How should a stored-items claim be documented?

A plain inventory with photographs, dates and the source of the water is the strongest record an owner can keep.

An insurer or an adjuster needs to see what was in the garage or shed before the water came, what it was worth to the owner and what happened to it afterward. The inventory does not have to be elaborate. It has to be dated, it has to be specific about location, and it has to show the water line on the wall or the shelf in the same photograph as the item.

Receipts, warranty cards and old photographs of the items help when they exist. Where they do not, the owner's own description, written at the time and signed, is still a record. This page does not say what a policy will pay, because that depends on the policy and the insurer. What it can say is that a documented item is easier to discuss than one described from memory a month later.

• The item, its location in the building and what it was used for
• A photograph of the item before it is moved
• A receipt, an age estimate or a note of value for anything of significance
• A photograph of the water line on the wall or the shelf

What should change in how the garage is used afterward?

Stored goods should sit on shelving above the reach of the next storm, in sealed containers.

A garage that floods once will flood again unless the storage changes. Shelving that is raised off the slab, bins with tight lids and a rule that nothing lives on the floor are cheap changes that make the next storm a smaller event for the contents. They do not stop water from coming in, and the entry point is a separate question that the extraction step deals with.

The most useful habit is to keep a short list of what sits in the lowest part of the building. Once a year, or after any storm that reached the garage, the list is checked against the shelves, so that the paper records and the family photographs are not the first things stacked on the floor.