Your Freezer Could Save Grandma's Wedding Photo: Disaster Recovery Tips for Family Treasures
After a flood or fire, nobody goes looking for the couch first. They want the wedding photos, Grandma's letters, the painting that hung in the hallway for fifty years. The instinct to rescue them fast is right, but grabbing a hair dryer or pulling apart stuck pictures can finish off what the water started. With some patience and a few household tools, much of what looks ruined can still be saved. These steps from professional conservators, gathered by the Heritage Emergency National Task Force, show you how.
With a little patience and prompt action, saving cherished photographs, letters, paintings and other irreplaceable objects is possible. These step-by-step instructions will help you stabilize your treasured objects and buy you time to make an educated decision on further treatment and handling of your family mementos.
Prioritize: You may not be able to save everything, so focus on what’s most important to you, whether for historic, monetary, or sentimental reasons.
Create Space: Spreading things out to dry takes up a lot of space! Be creative: gently clip photos to clotheslines, create a drying hammock out of plastic porch screen taped between two chairs, close the gaps in a drying rack with tulle or wrap the bars with pipe insulation for extra support.
Handle with Care: Use great caution in handling your heirlooms, which can be especially fragile when wet.
Gentle air drying is best for all your treasured belongings—indoors, if possible. Hair dryers, irons, ovens, and prolonged exposure to sunlight will do irreversible damage. Increase indoor airflow with fans, open windows, air conditioners, and dehumidifiers.
Photos, papers, books, and textiles should be frozen if you can’t get them dry within 48 hours. Wrap items in freezer paper and place them in a frost-free freezer set at the lowest possible temperature.
Photographs
Never pull apart wet photographs and negatives that are stuck together.
If time allows, take a photo of your photograph to save a digital copy of it
Clean photographs by rinsing them carefully in distilled water, if available, or in clean water if you cannot find distilled water.
Air dry photos on a plastic screen or paper towel, or by hanging them by the corner with plastic clothespins.
Don’t let the image come into contact with other surfaces as it dries.
Books
If you have books that were in sewage-contaminated water, they are hazardous to your health. Discard them or consult a professional conservator for advice.
Remove dust jackets to dry separately.
Place paper towels between the pages of wet books.
For books that are damp or partially wet, if the books were in muddy, rusty, or salt water, rinse the books, one at a time, in a bucket or tub of clean water, holding the book closed tightly while dipping.
When lives are upended by a flood, hurricane, tornado or fire, treasured possessions such as family heirlooms, photos and other keepsakes become more cherished. The Heritage Emergency National Task Force offers these basic guidelines from professional conservators for those who are searching for — and finding — family treasures amid the ruins.
Disasters move fast, and your memories need you to move quickly too, just not carelessly. Pick what matters most, give it room to breathe, and let air, time, and your freezer do the work. Then share this guide with someone who might need it before the next storm hits. A flood can take a house, but your family's story is still yours to save.
This article is adapted from "Save Your Family Treasures," published by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), with guidance from the Heritage Emergency National Task Force, which FEMA and the Smithsonian Institution co-sponsor.
