How To Save Your Old Shit After Floods
Hi, Tumblr. My reach is small and I am but a poor archivist who can't afford Blaze, so please boost this.
Author's note: I hate to have to add this, but cultural heritage is inherently political and this made it to TERFblr somehow so... The author is nonbinary. Go get your own archivist to teach you if you're gonna be like that.
The west coast of the US is flooding, and while it might seem unimportant in the face of people dying, getting stranded, and being without power, a lot of people are also going to lose personal history to flooding. This gets talked about a lot in the context of hurricanes, but we should all know what to do to save our pictures and documents, too.
FEMA has a good cultural heritage rescue guide here: https://www.fema.gov/disaster/recover/save-family-treasures
The Northeast Document Conservation Center is also invaluable: https://www.nedcc.org/free-resources/preservation-leaflets/overview (check out the Emergency Management section)
Knowing what to do before it happens is crucial to actually saving things. Read this stuff now! Like to save! Bookmark it! Screen cap it! Idc but keep it handy (and remember you might not have online access when you need it)!
The FEMA guide does a really good job at explaining how to dry things, but the basics are:
Separate, separate, separate. While it's still wet if you can do so without causing further damage. Salvage color photos before black and white, paper backing before plastic film. Pre-gelatin silver (black and white on paper) photographs (collodion, ambrotype, cyanotype, etc.) get priority, but most people don't have those. Remove items from frames of they show signs of water damage. Take off dust jackets, unfolder documents, etc.
Rinse with clean, bottled water if there is mud or other debris. Use a dish pan, fill it with a little water, and slip photos in carefully for a short little bath. Dip, dip, dip if you need a little agitation to remove mud, but don't wipe or swish (unless it's REALLY stuck and you're okay with the possibility of damage). Change your water often, and try to avoid agitating things or touching the image side. It is recommended to hold books closed to protect the textblock from more water when you rinse. Obviously, don't soak things. Photos are probably your most fragile material and can be submerged for up to 48 hours before it gets really hard to save them, so you don't want to add to that time.
Spread it all out. Get creative with how you keep things apart. Hang things if they can take the strain, but remember that the corners are the weakest points of paper and photos. Books can be tented on clotheslines if the binding is still sturdy (pages aren't coming loose. If they are, see the next point)
Interleave books with paper towels every 1/4 inch of pages or so. If you can, fan them out and stand them upright. Change the paper towels as they get damp (and idk, use them for cleaning tasks. Shit's expensive)
Get air moving. Indirect airflow from a fan is best. Avoid fluttering. I face my fan into a wall or upwards to diffuse the air flow.
Some staining is likely. Dried mud can be brushed from paper like book textblocks but shouldn't be brushed from photographs, so rinse photos first.
Photograph materials while they're wet and still intact. If you should lose something while salvaging, at least you have a photograph of it so it's not lost forever.
If you cannot dry things immediately, wrap individual items or small clumps that are stuck together in wax paper (ideally. Parchment can work, plastic wrap or ziplocs if you have to) and PUT IT IN A FREEZER. Not an ice chest. The goal is to freeze the water, and ice chests will soak it. Freezing buys you time. It halts water damage until you can deal with things. When it's time to dry, unwrap your items and allow them to fully thaw before even thinking about separating them.
If you find mold, quarantine those materials in sealed plastic bags and freeze. You need professional help. It is not worth getting sick because you tried to clean mold without appropriate protection!
ETA: These techniques also work on that book you dropped in the bathtub or spilled a soda on, just sayin'.
Again please feel free to share this! Fellow conservators, GLAM professionals, or those who have been there, done that, feel free to add to this! Thank you!
Edits:
This was hiding in the tags and is also a good practice! Preparation is key to reducing damage. Which reminds me--store the good stuff on your highest shelves. It won't help in cases like Hurricane Katrina, but a minor-to-medium flood probably won't reach!
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Steve knits. When he can't quite shake his anxiety, he puts on his glasses and sits down to knit.
He sits on whatever surface is closest to him. Eddie regularly finds him asleep on the couch with a half finished scarf in his hands. When Robin hasn't seen him in a while, she knows he'll be inside the staff room, sitting on the table, knitting colorful socks.
Nance cooks in his kitchen for movie night while Steve sits on the counter chatting with her and knitting her a purse. The whole party is warm and cozy all through the winter thanks to the gloves and beanies Steve makes for them and they all make special requests for him to knit for their birthdays.
When Steve doesn't know what to knit, he knits flowers for Eddie. Eddie puts them inside makeshift vases around their apartment (solo cups, random glasses or novelty mugs) and the girls steal them when they come around to hang out. Eddie doesn't worry, there will always be more.
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I woke up with an epiphany of an idea for Vol.2 Eddie lives AU!
You know what kind of low-budget prompt/costume would a DnD nerd with a lot of time on his hands make? Chainmaille!! You can make it out of super-cheap garden wire with only wire cutters and two pliers. Eaaasy!
So before Eddie hops into Upside-down he grabs a shirt from his closet and he already had it in ‘83 so Dustin gets one as well! Metal!
Demobats still kind of tear him apart, mostly on his legs and arms; he gets a nasty scratch on his neck, which bleeds a lot so he still passes out in Dustin’s arms, but his abdomen is almost completely fine! A claw or two managed to pierce through, but bats were unable to bite.
And Steve kind of gets an idea from it. He has a boring ass job, which has a lot of free time in between customers and they know that Vecna is coming back. They are getting prepared this time and he is putting some extra protection on his kids! So he visits Eddie after he is released from hospital, to ask him how can he make one (or about dozen for everyone). They raid shops for supplies, take it all to Harrington residence and get to work. Eddie shows him how you coil the wire and then cut it into individual rings. Its an easy process but it takes a long time to build a useful length of chainmaille.
So they round up the whole party. Eddie as he already has a shirt tailored to his measurements makes rings for everyone and they make a tradition of piling on floor in front of tv with a movie playing while everyone does some crafts on the side.
And Eddie then one day shares fun-fact about silk armour used in Asia. And did you know it can actually stop like an actual knife or arrow because of how tightly it is vowen? And the real protection comes from using layers. Leather, fabric, metal, silk…as long as you have several layers.
Huh, Steve’s mother has some silk shit in her closet, they could totally raid. And there are some leather jackets in second-hand shops. And Dustin totally drags Eddie and Steve on a medieval fare in next town and they buy anything that seems even remotely useful (they got a whole ass sword and real shield from one! Steve gave them to Eddie who is in heaven and little but in love!) And Robin comes with an idea of piercing some leather belts with nails and trimming them into chokers, because so many of them got choked by vines, or bats on their last adventure.
Slowly but surely they convert one of Steve’s garages into an DIY- armoury. (Btw, that ridiculous mansion has 5 of them! Eddie almost chokes with laughter when he finds out because why? He basically lives there alone!) Every member of the party has their own stash there, tailored to their needs, preferences and abbilities. Armour, weapons, supplies for travelling or trips into danger zones.
They are not getting surprised this time!
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