ASAP Suggests on recovery of river flooded photos

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ASAP Suggests on recovery of river flooded photos

Well tonight hopefully I'll be going through my photos and a few albums, with the aid of our church's youth girls.

Our house was flooded Saturday, and spent all day yesterday pulling things out and trying to find anything worthy the trouble of working to save or clean it.

Any suggestions? Sites I might quickly check?
Not only were they wet, but contaminated water and mud on everything. Were told that the Current River, usually 1/2 mile behind the house has never come into the house. 1908 I think was the year, they said was the record, but we broke it Sat Sunday by 6-7 feet, the 4.5-5 foot that was in our house.

We're almost done pulling things out of the house, for trash pickup.....couldn't get a dumpster, but my Scrapbooking suitcase on wheels is the next item to do after lunch.

So sorry this happened Laura... we had the same thing happen here about 18 months ago... and then more flooding just 6 months ago. So many people lost everything even their homes were so damaged they had to be demolished. Soooo sad. Thank God, we were spared by only 1 block but a very similar situation where it hadn't happened in over 100 years with our rivers. It just rained for over a week so heavy every minute of every day.
The only advice I can give is that we once had an apartment flood due to busted pipes and i waited too long to take the pictures apart and they dried and stuck to one another causing peeling.. I was told that there was a way you could re-wet them and then lay them out to dry. they will be wrinkled but at least you can get them scanned by a professional company that can do photo correcting and you can reprint and at least have something for your future. It has been almost 18 years since it happened so I can't remember if it was straight water or some kind of solution that has to do with the normal developing process (although this has probably changed in the last 18 years too) But I imagine some of your pictures are older. I'll look around a bit and see if I can find an article about it. If i do I'm come back and post it here for you.

Well that was easier than I thought. I had the article bookmarked. smiley
It's from the Northeast Document Conservation Center link here.

This is the one (from FujiFilm) that I was telling you about the various types of photos... it has several of them listed and how to links on the page.

Here's another... and
Another... and

then I even have a video saved.

Best of Luck sweetie!

So sorry Laura! smiley I don't have any flood recovery advice for photos, but just wanted to let you know I will be thinking of you!

Thanks Shawna! Wonderful links from what I saw just glancing at them. When I get some more time I plan on reading over them!

So sorry to hear about the flooding Laura! Wishing I could do more than offer my condolences.