Many Rio Texas churches and homes suffered water damage as a result of Hurricane Harvey. Time is of the essence in preserving personal and church documents. Bonnie Saenz, Rio Texas Conference Archivist, has offered the following guidelines for handling water damaged items.

If the water damage is not too bad, laying the documents out flat to air dry will help preserve the documents within 48 hours of being wet. In other cases, if the documents have been in stagnant water they could be contaminated and gloves should be worn when handling. Unfortunately, they may not be worth keeping. However, steps to transfer information from these damaged documents can be taken. You can take photos of the documents and/or input the information into a Word document so that the vital information is still kept. Just ensure that the drying documents is thorough to prevent the growth of mold which can happen as soon as 48 hours from initial water damage.

Here are some links for more in depth information on how to handle water damaged documents and items. 

https://www.archives.gov/preservation/conservation/flood-damage.html

https://www.archives.gov/preservation/holdings-maintenance/wet-records

http://www.ccaha.org/uploads/media_items/technical-bulletin-salvaging-books.original.pdf

http://www.loc.gov/preservation/emergprep/dry.html

https://www.nedcc.org/free-resources/preservation-leaflets/3.-emergency-management/3.6-emergency-salvage-of-wet-books-and-records