 We're going to enter our flooded house for the first time but before we go in we're going to have a walk around to make sure that things are reasonably structural sound. There's always some danger you never can be absolutely sure but you can be fairly sure with a modern house by walking around looking at the foundation looking at the lines on the house that the house hasn't suffered any major structural damage so that's what we're going to do first and then we'll go inside and we'll look to see what we've got left in there and what's messy and what has to be cleaned up so let's just get started. The house obviously was all sandbagged and so looking at the foundation in the front is going to be very difficult until all of that is taken away but we can see it at the most exposed point which is around on the other side of the house so we'll go on over there and we'll have a look and we'll see what it looks like in this particular case the foundation is poured concrete which is what I would have expected and this is a relatively modern house I suspect 20 years old or so and we've taken the sandbags away we've taken the plastic off the wall and we can see that the window has been forced in by the pressure of the water and undoubtedly that's one of the points that water got into the basement but the basement looks normal there's some little hairline cracks there's a tiny little crack here but that probably was not caused by anything to do with the flood so the foundation looks secure the house looks square the roof lines are all as they should be they're nice and neat there's no dips no bulges in the walls so so far the house looks great coming around on the backside of the house and you can see on the plastic that there's a line right about here which is the maximum height to the water and so the water never got very high on the walls of this house but it certainly submerged the whole basement one of the other things that we want to check as we go around the house is was the electricity and the gas turned off and in this case the gas enters the house right here and this valve is on so the homeowner did not shut the gas valve off at the house but in this case the gas valve is shut off out in the backyard at the meter we've already checked that the difficulty with the electricity is a lot of people look to see if the disc is turning as an indication that the power is on but that is not an indication that the power is on that's just an indication of whether you're actually using power or not so your trouble is that you must call a power company if you're in town ask them if the power has been cut off and usually out at the pole is where they cut the power off and in this case that's what they have already done the switch has been thrown at the transformer so all the electricity is off in this house but don't go by anything you see at this meter if you wanted to check in this case you could remove this screw and take off this faceplate this happens to be the breaker box for the air conditioner and if you had a test light you could check on the points up above and see whether there was any voltage uh if there was well then obviously you've still got power on to the house but that's one place on the outside now that we've completed our walk around the outside it's time to go in and as you can see we've already started some preparations one of the things we want to do is get some ventilation in this house as quickly as possible so we're going to leave the door open as we go in we want to be cautious we don't know what the floor was made of and so we want to test first to see if the floor seems solid uh the floors in some of the houses may have been made of particle board or chip board so called and flooding them for a few days to a week or more like this one has been flooded will soften them up to the point where you'll be able to feel that the floor is no longer solid if it is you want to proceed very cautiously and if it seems extreme you want to lay boards down over the joist which run crossways to the room so that you can enter safely and get in the other thing you want to do is you want to look up if the house has been seriously flooded and we'll see it in the basement the water will have soaked up the plaster board and it may have already started to collapse that's a real danger to you because the plaster board is so heavy that it can do you some serious damage if it falls down on your head in this particular case the flooding was only about five inches deep maximum was down in this range somewhere and the plaster board even seems reasonably solid clear down at the base of the wall the big trouble here is this rug it's holding moisture and it's keeping it on that floor which is no help at all it's doing continued damage let's go down in the basement because that's where the major damage should have taken place because we know that this house was completely flooded up to the at least the first floor level down here we can see we've got a real mess if we look over here we'll see the walls are bulged this is this is paneling when it gets wet it expands it was placed in there tight it has no place to go except the bulge and that's what you see here as you look up you see that the ceiling has caved in in many places in other places the suspended ceiling has sagged very badly and those sheets though very light when dry are fairly heavy right now and you can see there's toys and cards and everything else stuck on the ceiling so obviously the water was clear up there and really gave everything a good soak you can see that it's only been about 10 days but already we've got some growth started on the wood and so we've got to get that dried out as soon as possible to stop that from deteriorating still further and this is one of the reasons we want to get those rugs off upstairs that are still as wet as they can be as we can see here cabinets fell down cupboards and things fell down that were full of toys and of course much of this stuff may have floated it's impossible to see what's underneath some of those tremendous piles of material but you can see that there's a cabinet laying down there there's a laundry basket and as you notice we have a freezer or a freezer refrigerator down here that obviously floated and is now lying on top of a overstuffed chair and so forth and just general chaos everywhere look I just fell through the wall and you can see how soft that plaster board is it just comes apart in your hands nothing left and now dick that's a really a good idea to pull that off so you can get the wood dried out it is true uh in fact this whole basement's got to be stripped you've got to get the paneling off the wall you got to get all this plaster board off the wall got to get the paper out but you got to get this stuff off the floor first so I don't want to tear down the wall until the floor gets cleaned over and here's the utility room and as you can see the washer and dryer have both been completely submerged the washer floated out of position because it's got a waterproof tub in it and both appliances are ruined as we enter another room in the basement you can see that there's a piece of ceiling right here on the floor so then when you look up you can see precisely what we were concerned about upstairs when we talked about entering the house if that ceiling board gets submerged it's very up to get so soft that it can't stand its own weight and it'll fall down this happens to be heating duct so it's not too bad but all the rest of this is plaster board and needs to be approached with some caution obviously on the floor we have a rug that's holding mud dirt and we have the mattress still from the bed and a little desk and number of other things around everything in a room is pretty much spoiled there's a few items could be salvaged but pretty much needs to be just cleaned up and all of this plasterboard walls torn down all the paneling taken off the walls now the videotape we've just seen raises a number of questions first of all let's talk about the protective clothing that all of you had on the boots the mass the gloves is all that necessary dick well it certainly is if you care about your own health after all you don't really know what's in there this has been flooded with surface water what's in the surface water is very hard to tell but we know that lagoons were flooded that sewers backed up that all kinds of material has gotten into that water and there's just no sense in taking a chance i realized there's always a possibility that people want to be macho and just weighed in and do it but it's much better to protect yourself you talked about stripping off the paneling and the wall board i guess what's the state of the the material underneath it the studs the joists the studs and joists if you can get them dry relatively quickly rock will not continue and so the whole idea in in this business with flooded houses is to strip it out is all the things that have been damaged strip them out as quickly as possible particularly those things that hold water like rugs on the floor and insulation in the walls get in there get that material out so you can get it dry the sooner you get it dry the less mold mildew and rock you'll have and the less odors and other problems that you'll have also carpet is always a tough problem people spend a lot of money on carpets you walk into a home like this and there isn't a piece left anywhere that isn't totally saturated with floodwater many of us in the past have had to deal with flooded basements and people realize that you know it is possible to clean up some carpets but flooded groundwater is very very different than this type of circumstance where you have all of the raw sewage and everything else that's in the floodwater for the most part in a flooded home like this the carpet should just be discarded there should be no attempt to salvage it one of the situations with drapes is you almost have to play it by ear on almost every situation these folks have moved their lifted their drapes up and I don't believe this has actually been in the floodwater and this type of a curtain would be something that was cleanable in the washing machine to start with many drapes would have been ones that had to be dry cleaned and sometimes the drape will actually get wet but in this circumstance where it doesn't appear that it's wet it just is hanging here it's got a lot of odor in it from the odors that are in the room and in the space but I'm sure it could be cleaned in a washing machine with the procedures we're recommending for cleaning any machine washable fabric in this room there's obviously some vertical panels window treatments that have not been in the flood itself and that will often be the case but as they stay here over the time it takes to get the insurance adjuster here and before they can actually start cleanup mildew and all of the various other contaminants will start affecting some of these products and there are many things in a home that will require dry cleaning now obviously if it's flood soaked if it's down on the floor and it's soaked with water it probably is already ruined if it's a dry cleanable only product however there are drapes many drapes that do have to be dry cleaned and it may just be some water spotting on the lower edge or they still may look relatively clean but they're starting to be affected by mildew and eventually will need a dry cleaning it's very very important that everything be dry before you take it to the dry cleaner they cannot put wet products into their machines without totally disrupting the humidity level so you do need to get them dried out and then take them for the dry cleaning process dry cleaning is effective at sanitizing and cleaning so basically if it's a dry cleanable product and it's not already ruined because it's flood soaked that is a good alternative on getting some of these materials cleaned up okay now we're in the basement and with all of the many things that we're finding down here upset and in the heaps here is a upholstered uh couch of some sort now this particular piece doesn't have any exposed wood but many times when a family comes back in and they find the favorite old family chair that is an upholstered chair that has nice cherry wood arms and so on the first question is is it salvageable something like this probably they would want to just get rid of but if this were a keepsake family piece or a very well made piece of furniture it might be worth to try to salvage on an upholstered furniture what they need to do is to get it into a dry space if it's not raining to the out of doors they should never leave a wood item sitting in the sun for a long period of time but for a short period that's fine it'll help to dry it out then they need to strip it of all of the upholstery of all of the stuffings anything that is textile type of fabrications the backing the underneath part all of this just get rid of it and after it's stripped down to the frame then send it and dried out and the wood cleaned up with a substance a wood soap or a cleaning compound that will clean up the wood the rust is taken off of any moving parts and cleaned up then it could be sent to have it reupholstered and recushed and obviously to go to that kind of trouble and that kind of expense it probably needs to be an item that for some reason or another you really don't want to part with it otherwise for upholstered furniture it's probably best to discard it another item that we're finding a lot of down here are children's toys and children never like to part with their toys it's very tempting to want to clean those up a lot of toys are hard plastics at this point and it depends upon what material they're made from whether they will survive the disinfecting process but never never just hose off a toy and let a child have it back unless you're totally sure that you have disinfected all of the surfaces the cracks and the crevices and there's no question about it okay this defreeze just like many appliances is probably best to do something other than try to reuse the same deep freeze now one of the things we didn't talk about on this tape deanna is disinfecting sanitizing what's the difference well first of all i think that people need to realize that when you use some of these products in a laundry circumstance that they may not be disinfecting products that they may think will disinfect because they know them to be a disinfectant on hard surfaces the only way a person can be sure that they're getting a disinfectant that will work in a laundry circumstance is if that product is carrying an epa registration number and there are directions on the container that indicate that it is a disinfectant in a laundry circumstance chlorine bleach is a disinfectant being a disinfectant means it basically kills all harmful bacteria but there are a lot of other laundry products and laundry aids out there that do sanitizing will be the term that's often used and will remove some of the bacteria but not necessarily kill all of the harmful bacteria and that's something that i think people do need to pay attention to when they're cleaning up these soft materials one of the issues that has been raised is concerning the safety of the water supply and on public water systems if the water pressure has remained on during the flood as this one at least we believe has then the water will be safe because the system has been pressurized during the whole flood period now if you're on a private well the you can't assume that the water system is safe in fact if the well itself was flooded it is not going to be safe until that well is cleaned up public wells that get flooded have the same problem and in a public situation of course the the public water supply is taking care of it for you they don't put that well online if it's not producing safe water so the well is taken offline they work to clean it up and then they'll bring it back online when they have it safe i think i'd like to talk some more about these private wells morgan if your if your well has been flooded it's not safe to use it is that correct that's right if your well has been flooded it's going to have contaminants from the flood water which include bacteria from septic systems from untreated wastewater systems from cities lagoons livestock waste and and so on treated as raw sewage so what do you do with that then well it's a process that involves removing the equipment from the well and using a baler or pump to pump out all the sediment and you got to continue to do that until the water that you get out is clear you want to stir it up down really good so you get that sediment out then you put the pump back in and you run the pump and make sure that the water you're getting is clear then you would use a shock chlorination treatment procedures for that are kind of spelled out in our extension bulletin on shock chlorination and then uh you would shock chlorinated recirculating the water back down in the well to make sure that you've got the high dose of chlorine mixed into the whole column of water in the well and you continue to do that for at least 10 minutes then you close the well up make sure that you have it sanitized and sealed up so nothing else can get it from the outside and then you go in the house and you start opening faucets one at a time and when you smell the high dose of chlorine then you shut the the faucet off you let it sit there for at least 12 hours preferably 24 and then you waste that chlorine water you don't want to put it on vegetation because it could kill it you don't want to put it in your septic system because it's not good for that either so you put it out in a roadway or someplace where it isn't going to harm anything you should take a look here there's quite a bit of dirt on the floor and you could tell that the flood water has come up into some of the cabinets and even the dishwasher so before you start doing any work with the food and the utensils you really have to clean up quite a bit any of the sinks and the food contact surface areas and the floors now what you need to remember is your sanitizer will not be effective as long as there is quite a bit of dirt the first thing to do is to clean up the dirt very very good because this would tend otherwise to bind the sanitizer and you would not get a kill effect with such a sense of loss one of the things that people might tend to do is to try to save as much food as possible and we really don't want to encourage this because a lot of the food may be contaminated the rule of thumb in food safety is if in doubt throw it out and all the food that was in here that came in contact with flood waters has been dumped just throw it away don't attempt to save it don't follow any cleaning or whatever you could see our potatoes here that have come in touch with flood waters there are some tomatoes there are some open containers of different things flour and sugar all of this that had come in contact with flood water has to be thrown away this cupboard had food that did not come in contact the flood water it did not come up that high however some of the foods are in open containers and since we have to assume the flood water had sewage in it and some microbes are carried through the air anything that was in open container should be thrown away even products that were partially opened even if the safety is not seriously compromised the quality is already has deteriorated quite a bit and you don't want to eat this product we found out that the flood water had gone into the dishwasher and the dishwasher was full one thing you want to check out before starting your dishwasher make sure that the water service has been restored and the sewage system is running okay now everything that was in here has touched the flood water so it needs either to be thrown away or disinfected things made of rubber plastic and wood this item cannot be sanitized effectively because the microbes hide in small pores in there things like this have to be thrown away again wood plastic rubber dishes with severe cracks in them all the other items things that can be taken apart need to be taken apart all the others have to be washed in clean hot water uh with a detergent and again they need to be sanitized following the guidelines that we talked about before that is putting in a solution of liquid chlorine two tablespoons of liquid chlorine solution per gallon of water and then you do not dry these with the cloth you let them air dry and you should not run your dishwasher until the water service has been restored and the sewage system is running and then you run it with on the high heat setting you do not use the energy saving uh setting to clean uh flood damage uh pots and pans now there seems to be a discrepancy here and I want to clear this up real quickly in the first tape you talked about pitching appliances if they get wet and yet Fadi has just talked about a dishwasher that's had flood waters up in it and he's saying clean the dishwasher and disinfect it now is there a discrepancy here I don't think so what I was talking about the the dishwasher was not completely immersed in flood waters but some of the water did get into the dishwasher and probably contaminated some dishes and pots and pans I think what Dick was mentioning probably was if the equipment was completely immersed in water is that right dick yes but if it gets up into the control section that's where you really have trouble because those electric controls get water into places that you just can't get it out and you can't get the mud out and uh usually the cost of replacing those makes it improbable that it's worth the time and effort