 Fire ants are an insect that can withstand a lot of natural disasters but the one thing that they really can get through very well are floods. Their natural habitat in South America are flood plains. What they do are they're able to attach their tarsie or their toes like us holding hands and they gather together and they join one another and they bring the brood and the queen into the middle of this group of ants. And when the water rises they float. Their bodies have wax on the outside which makes them hydrophobic which is the water tends to go away from them. But this is even exacerbated when they grab one another and they have the bubbles on the inside and really it's really difficult to break water tension when they grab together like that so they float very well on top of the water. The fire ants can move around in the ref but they don't have to because when they grab hold of one another they trap air bubbles and so they can not only move around but they can also breathe through the air bubbles that they grasp. One thing that is interesting to note though is if you have a raft with brood it's the one that can last seven days to maybe up to two weeks but if they don't have brood the raft doesn't seem to last as long and just tends to break up and go away. So the fact that they have their young and their queen in there with them makes them a little more prone to keep that raft together and they can preserve themselves until the waters go down and then they can come back on dry ground and get out. The fire ants can last probably seven days to a couple of weeks floating like that if they have to. If you're going to wade you need to cover yourself well. You don't want to walk out there without a shirt on because it's hot. You need a shirt with long sleeves. If you're not in deep water I would suggest pants and boots because if the raft touches you the first thing they're going to do is they're going to look to climb out of the water. And if you are what brushes up against them you are the first solid ground they have come upon and they're going to get on you and they're very difficult to get off when they're dry but they seem to be even more difficult to get off when they're wet. Now if you're in a boat what you want to do is keep your boat away from the raft you don't want to poke them with an oar they'll climb up the oar and you want to keep everything you've got in that boat away from the raft and just maneuver around it so you don't come in contact with it. You want to get your livestock and your pets and things like that out of the flood waters as fast as possible. If you have an opportunity to move your pets before an event comes in if you look a lot of people have shelters where you can bring your pets and board them. So after a flood basically everything that's lying on the ground is going to be somewhere that fire ants once they have gotten out of their raptor going to try to get under to find a temporary mound or place of shelter until they can re-establish a mound of their own. So when you're cleaning up in your yard, logs, boards, things like that be sure to check under them when you pick them up to make sure you don't have a fire ant mound under them. After that I would go ahead if you still have fire ant mounds out there a broadcast bait application would be very effective at this time.