The following article includes excerpts from a true story shared with Artifcts by a member of the Arti Community and republished here with permission. May their loss help your future.
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A Careless Accident at a Storage Facility
Imagine yourself in this scenario: Wildfires are approaching your home. You evacuate, taking with you your most cherished possessions, including those incredibly vulnerable photos, videos, books, and family documents. You feel relief when you place them inside a climate-controlled storage unit far outside the fire zone.
Days later you receive a call from the storage facility. There’s been an accident. Your storage unit has been flooded via a damaged sprinkler system in the unit above your own. “Please come to our facility to review and document the damage for insurance purposes.”
Your heart sinks to the floor. The expression, “Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” comes to mind.
When you arrive, and you are taking in the large-scale and surely emotionally charged loss, look once, then twice, before springing to action on areas of most obvious damage.
Salvaging Water Damaged Photos and Negatives
When mother nature, home mishap, or some other event occurs that threatens to rob you of your cherished memories incapsulated in your photos, there’s no room for “should haves.” We all know about fireproof boxes, digitization options, and more. But in life we are busy, and we have finite resources, too. We made the best choices we could at the time. Now is the time for action to salvage what can be salvaged.
- Act smart, act fast
The most intriguing piece of advice you’ll hear when water has claimed your photos? Freeze them. That’s right, stick them in plastic bags and freeze them. Okay, first interlay sheets of wax paper and place them in a giant plastic freezer bag, but yes, then freeze them. That bit of advice alone should shock you into a feeling of hope. Store that tidbit away for the day you need it.
Your top goals are to prevent further damage and to bring back under your control at least some of the variables now, and frankly, for the remaining life of these items. Mold is an equally deadly culprit where the life of your photos are concerned.
Talking us through the "I froze them, now what?” frontier, we reached out to professional photo manager Kristen Goodman, of Clicking with Kristen. Based out of Naples, Florida, Kristen is still helping families caught in the crosshairs of Hurricane Ian (2022) and has deep experience in helping salvage precious photos.
- Embrace Kristen’s “Dont’s”
You’re poised for action, which is great, but keep these guidelines in mind so we can skip the regret that you may otherwise feel later:
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- Don’t panic and throw away your wet, muddy, or damaged photos or albums.
- Don’t dry photos in a place with bright sunlight, wind, or dust.
- Don’t pry wet or dry photos apart.
- Don’t use heat sources (hairdryer, microwave) to dry photos.
- Don't forget gloves and a mask when handling wet photos and albums.
- Don’t delay! After about 48 hours mold will begin to grow.
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Now, Onto the “Nexts” in the Mess
Be discriminating. Which photos do you want to spend time and money to preserve and potentially restore? For example, if you have very old heritage photos, the ONLY photo of {name of loved one}, you may want to prioritize these photos for consultation with a professional photo restoration service.
Separating, soaking, and freezing photos. We warned you not to pry photos apart, and that advice holds. But if they are apart, remove any plastic covers and sleeves from the photos, if possible. And then layer wax paper between individual photos or album pages to freeze.
If you’re thinking, “But I have a brick of stacked dried photos,” there’s still hope. You can soak them in clean water and then gently peel them apart, then proceed with drying them out, but when in doubt, talk with a local pro!
Once your pictures have frozen, you’ll thaw them out in batches to begin drying.
The photos’ futures. For those in acceptable condition (to you!), digitize them and toss the originals. They are very vulnerable to mold, it’s a sad truth. For the others, if they are important enough to you for any reason, take them to a professional for restoration, repair, and digitization.
- Go get professional help!
Amazing resources abound for you to learn more and to connect with professionals locally to help you. Here are just a few resources Kristen recommends:
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- B&H offers ongoing educational webinars and resources. You might start with this video, Protect Your Photos from Extreme Weather.
- Kathy Stone’s blog, including Preparing to Evacuate Ahead of Floods or Severe Storms as well as What to Do When Disaster Strikes Your Photos
- The Photo Managers, to find someone local to help!
- And one more for good measure from Artifcts, the Society of American Archivists, through which you can find archival specialists for photos and beyond!
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How Did the Storage Story End?
If you're like us and dislike a cliffhanger, here’s how the storage disaster we started this article with turned out:
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