Hurricane IDA debacle, or Don't Make the Same Mistake I Did

Don’t put power to the trains until you check out the boards. Any sign of dirt or mineral deposits remove the boards, wash them with dish soap and water, blow dry, then let them dry for another 24 hours. Hit them with contact cleaner. You should be OK after that.

Pete

Open them up, don't think you'll get away by just draining them.  They will have to come apart to be thoroughly dried and cleaned.

Any boxes in a basement are subject to moisture and eventual deterioration.

Keeping them as high as possible is best bet. A dehumidifier is essential. Unfortunately,  floods have a mind of their own. My friends sister had four feet of water in her basement.

Flooding is not covered by HO insurance. Flood insurance is expensive and the deductible is high.

Hope you all make out ok.

My wife noticed a bunch of fire trucks in our community today.  Turns out they were pumping out basements, now there are piles of carpet out for trash in front of a number of houses!  Obviously, I was one of the lucky ones with no water!

I was hired to clean a collection that was water damaged during a flood.  It's very time consuming.  John is spot on in that you have to open and clean everything!  The sooner you start, the better off you will be.  Be real careful. Some of the items will require a compete tear down. Some decals may come off depending on the item(s).

I would talk with your insurance carrier.  You might be covered if the water was from a drain back-up or a failed sump pump and not through the foundation, etc.

When I purchased the house I am in now, I dug a trench down to the foundation footings and trenched a line to the backyard which was below the elevation of the house foundation.  This then empties into a french drain with overflow to surface (still below the foundation elevation).  Both houses on either side of me have had water in their basements over the years.  I have not.  Glad I spent the money on the drain tile.

Truly sorry to hear about the flooding problem you had, Ron. I experienced something similar in our former home, and after that one occasion I made it a point to assure that anything on or near the floor--trains or anything else--had to be in large plastic storage tubs, and everything in or out of boxes had to be at least one foot above the floor on shelves. One time is all it took for me to learn that lesson, which I follow to this day in our new home (on much higher ground).

Thanks everyone, for your comments & suggestions. Appreciate you taking the time to respond.

Ron

I'm sorry to hear that you got water in your basement. Hopefully your trains will be salvageable.

Remember that it doesn't have to be flood water either. A few years ago I had to remove everything from under my layout because our water heater went in the next room. It released just enough water to flow under the layout. Thankfully, I had everything on pallets, so the only damage is that the bottom box on each stack showed signs of water exposure (extreme humidity). No damage to equipment.

Sorry to hear that.   It sounds like the water was alot higher than 3" before you got home   You probably saw the Ebb tide.  Luckily it was fresh water and not salt water and your trains can be salvaged using the advice you got in this thread

Know the feeling.  I feel for you.  Good luck.  It’s a long process that I have been through more than once.

A couple other thoughts...

If the water was driven by rain or a failed sump pump, your insurance might provide some coverage.  Be sure to ask - the worst they can do is say no.

Keep track of the time and materials you use during cleanup.  If your insurance provides some coverage, they might reimburse you for your efforts. 

Save all of the info for tax time - you might be able to take a deduction for a casualty loss.  See your accountant.

Good luck with the process - it's painful.

Ah, basements. Every so often I get to wishing that I had one...then I start hearing "sump pump" and "French drains" and "trenching", again. I guess that my still-dry post-Ida-rains backyard RR building is not so bad. (But - it does have a roof, which was slightly de-shingled last year in Hurricane Sally. Basements don't have shingles. So, there's that.)

If you have a pet supply store around, grab their biggest bag of unscented crystal cat litter. It’s silica gel, far cheaper than you’d get it in the small packs or the canisters in floral craft supply. If everyone else has thought of it first, motorcycle stores may have some of the big silica packs that come with their new stock. A sealed container with a layer of that on the bottom, with a chunk of old light-colored cotton sheet or T-shirt Over the crystals, will do nicely. It helps to do the wash, dry the boards, cars etc. as much as you can with a fan or hair dryer set on No Heat, then set them aside to get rid of the last dampness. When you get your big storage tubs, you can put a little thinner layer on the bottom with cloth over it just the same way. When you have the stored trains out for use, it’s good to put the crystals out in the sun on your next bright day so they let go of any water they picked up and stay effective.

Sanitizing shouldn’t be a terrible problem because the cleaning should handle anything nasty, but if it makes you feel better, you can test some alcohol spray on a non-critical piece. Also, Wal-Mart’s clearance aisle has some good deals on small UV-C sanitizers big enough for cell phones and so on. If you go that route, follow the directions exactly and try it out on a less valuable piece first.

Again, thanks to all for your comments and suggestions. The clean up will be tedious, but gotta be done.

The lesson is that even though it's wrapped in plastic, it isn't waterproof!

Have a wonderful Labor Day, even if you don't have to labor!

I had the trains in large closed plastic containers; they floated and then flipped and leaked.

That su$$. Just when you took good precautions.

@Becky, Tom & Gabe Morgan posted:

When you have the stored trains out for use, it’s good to put the crystals out in the sun on your next bright day so they let go of any water they picked up and stay effective.

***snip***

Sanitizing shouldn’t be a terrible problem because the cleaning should handle anything nasty, but if it makes you feel better, you can test some alcohol spray on a non-critical piece.

Just put the desiccant packs in the oven on low heat, around 200F, that's the way the commercial reusable packs are dried out.

Don't use alcohol on the paint, if you want to use a cleaner, Naphtha is a lot less likely to attack the paint.  Test it as well, but it's a whole lot less likely to eat paint.  Isopropyl Alcohol is frequently used as a paint stripper!

Ah, thanks! You’d know. I knew it could damage some decals, wasn’t sure about the paint or which brands might be more affected than others. My experience with it was as a desperation move because some of my colored plastic (minimally painted) craft tools came out of storage with a disgusting amount of rodent urine on them. Once the tools were clean, I tried my very fine mist hand sanitizer spray on them and all survived, but it didn’t seem to make much difference because they were already thoroughly scrubbed.

I won’t try anything, no matter how harmless it seems, on visible parts of anything valuable or really sentimental that’s painted. (Still remember thirty years back when everybody stripped HO paint with brake fluid, which worked on everything but Kato. Their stuff just got shiny.) Even Dawn dish soap gets the side eye from me until I’m sure it isn’t chewing anything up.

Have you tried UV-C on anything yet? I’m leery because it is UV, after all, no matter how much the manufacturers claim it won’t do damage. I suggested it for the same reason as drying the crystals in sunlight—around here, anything left wet attracts mold.

Very sorry to hear that.  But I am not sure why you have to "sanitize" or what that would actually be. I would just clean them and that would take care of it.

@Becky, Tom & Gabe Morgan posted:

Have you tried UV-C on anything yet? I’m leery because it is UV, after all, no matter how much the manufacturers claim it won’t do damage. I suggested it for the same reason as drying the crystals in sunlight—around here, anything left wet attracts mold.

If you're talking UV lamps, they'll fade almost any colored paint given enough time.  Like Will says, I doubt total disinfecting is necessary here, just some decent cleaning.  Before it all goes back together, you have to make sure everything is completely dry.

When I was cleaning the persons collection from the flood, I found a brown / gray residue on and in everything.  I did not have to worry about salt water attach, but within a very short time (day or days), things had started to rust / corrode from the "gray" water.  Gray water meaning waste water other than sewer water.  However, I am sure the sewer lines also backed up to some extent.

I set up several large tables and placed towels on them.  I then disassembled everything and used a hair dryer (on low heat) and dried everything.  Then I went about the task of cleaning, lubricating and testing.

I did not sanitize them so to speak.  I did use a combination of a very mild soap and warm water on the shells with an old tooth brush.  Followed by a thorough dry.

Unfortunately, there were some items that I did consider a total loss.  These were custom painted items that did not fair well.  A loss of value statement was written and then given to his insurance company.  I did not hear the final settlement.

I live in White Plains and it was aweful. Two houses on my street had 4 feet of water. There are rugs and garbage piled everywhere. We had about a inch of water in the basement. I had taken all the containers with the Lionel boxes and raised them and brought legacy engines upstairs to be safe. Every March I have a company clean my drain to the street, best $150 I can spend, as it was the reason we did not have water. many and my friends and neighbors neglect this and now are paying the price. The water I got was from the ground and not the drain. I stayed in the basement all night as a precaution..

Do you think the plastic bins I use for floor basement train storage are adequate? The bins give me between 4-5 inches.

I live in Midwest and have never had water because the house sets high on the lot and foundation plus a retaining pond for storm runoff.

After reading some of these posts do you guys think that’s enough.

I noticed out of 173 homes in our community, at least ten of them have rolls of rugs out for trash, so a number of people indeed did get hit with basement flooding.  I didn't get any water inside, but it was one of the rare times that my sump pump actually ran.  Behind the house I had a river, it was pretty scary for a spell!  The water coming off the roof was filling the downspouts and just running over the top, and they're whistle-clean, it was just too much water.

@train steve posted:

Do you think the plastic bins I use for floor basement train storage are adequate? The bins give me between 4-5 inches.

I live in Midwest and have never had water because the house sets high on the lot and foundation plus a retaining pond for storm runoff.

After reading some of these posts do you guys think that’s enough.

Only you can say if your storage methods are adequate, and that would obviously be based on the risks involved in your particular case.  I've never had water either, but you never know, I think we came close with Ida.

Locally we had about 7-8" of water in a few hours.  We also had at least one EF2 tornado in the county, lucky us.

Flooding can happen anywhere.  My previous house backed up to a canal and a summer of 2016 a monsoon rain event dropped 2" of water in 30 minutes in a two square mile radius around my neighborhood.  The house was in a flood plain, I had flood insurance, and I knew the risks.  However, until it happens to you, do you really ever know the risk?   

Due to the soil conditions, we typically don't have basements here in Arizona.  However, the residence portion of my property had 8" of water around it only because I had  wall around the property.  The garage had as much as 18" of water against it, but luckily the door metered the water and it kept the flooding inside the house to an inch or less.  My train building in the back yard had 4-6 inches of water in it due to the finish floor being lower.  A previous flood event that only affected the train room 6 years prior with about 1/2 of water put me in the habit of placing everything at grade level in plastic crates.  Not thinking I got lazy over time and some items ended up on the floor again.

When it was all said and done, the damage to my trains was minimal.  Mainly damaged boxes that I had to dispose of while the cars dried out.  The tool box that had all the collets for my Uni-mat lathe was not so lucky.  I didn't get to it right away and within 24 hours they completely rusted and I had to throw all of them away.  Most of the crates had train magazines in them and a few were cracked on the bottom.  They filled to the flood line with water and as luck would have it, they were all my 1940's Model Railroader magazines.  I have a digital subscription now, so no big loss in the end. 

When I moved out of that house, most of my trains went into storage.  The most valuable stayed in my new house.  When I cleaned out the storage unit last month to downsize my collection, I discovered wind driven rain came through the rear doors and damaged some boxes for trains I had in crates and some shipping boxes I was saving.  Again no major loss. 

Moral of my tale?  Don't think it can't happen to you.  While some of my trains will be going into a new shed on my property, every precaution will be taken to preserve the items I put in that shed.  If an item is special in any way, it stays in the house.  I also will think twice before purchasing property in a flood plain, or if I do verify that the finish floor of any space is well above the 100 year flood plain elevation.   

My flood damage was not due to IDA but rather tornados in the Midwest some years back.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

If you're talking UV lamps, they'll fade almost any colored paint given enough time.  Like Will says, I doubt total disinfecting is necessary here, just some decent cleaning.  Before it all goes back together, you have to make sure everything is completely dry.

Exactly. I’ve seen many people ruin what should have been salvageable electronics (tons of cameras and cell phones dropped in puddles, toilets or in one case a porta-John) through impatience. Dry doesn’t mean a couple of hours or overnight, especially in a humid Midwest summer. Dry means dry, if it takes a week in the silica bin. That saved a backup drive that was in my pocket while I was stuck outside in a flooding rainstorm.
Most of the phone sanitizers and the like call for a minute or two, but I’d not want to try them on anything expensive even with that short an exposure. (Okay, the person who wanted to rescue the porta-potty phone...sorry, that would probably still be in some kind of scrub!) One of the local post-flood cleaning services does a great job with a lot of things, but they use ozone and UV on everything and I wonder how that would do.

As for being critical of people who lost locos or rolling stock in this mess, it’s a prime example of doing the right thing and being overwhelmed by something unprecedented where the warning lead time was necessarily very, very short. Human and animal life and limb first, everything else after.

Afternoon, folks.

I'm surprised and pleased that so many of you responded to my initial post. To put a bow on this thread, I wanted to summarize what I'm going to do to protect my train room and my trains, and also offer some friendly advice to those who may want to protect themselves against these "once in a lifetime" occcurrences (Hurricane Sandy (2012) was supposedly a "once in a lifetine occurence" also, and we lost power for 5 days. So much for "once in a lifetinme events" occuring twice in 9 years)

OK, here's my plan:

I will not put wall-to-wall carpeting down again in my train room. I will put carpet tiles down instead.

I will adjust the placement of shelves so that the lowest shelf on which I have my train boxes is 1 foot above the basement floor. (All of my bottom shelves were 1" above the basement floor, so I was able to stack 3 boxes of trains high across a shelf. The lowest cardboard boxes wicked the water up to the 3rd box. I wound up throwing out 40-50 of the cardboard boxes my trains were in.)

I bought some plastic storage boxes that are stackable. I will label them and put trains in them that did not get damaged. I will never, ever, again place trains on the basement floor.

For those of you who are in an area where you just might get some basement water, and are considering setting up a new layout, I would strongly suggest modular construction (for example, Mianne, an OGR sponsor, who I used for an extension to my layout). My 16x10 train table is about 2 feet from the wall and the mold remediator (my wallboard is still moist) suggested that I take the layout down! to make it easier for them to cut 2 feet high sections out of the wallboard. I told him "No" and told him to have some skinny guys come in and do the work. If I had to do it all over again, modular is the way I'd go.

Well, that's the end of my tale of woe. I'm very fortunate that material things can be replaced, if necessary. I've gotten a very tiny taste of what our fellow Americans are now living with in Louisiana.

Ron

Not just Louisiana: look at NJ, and NYC, and into Connecticut. 11 people drowned in basement apartments in NYC.

Climate change is bringing more of everything: more droughts, more snow, more rain, more wind. Tornadoes in places that seldom had them; nastier and slower-moving hurricanes that drop tons of water over the same place—ironically for us, that's called "training," when water falls on the same place as the storm moves slowly along.

So places that never flooded before, guess what. My brother in Michigan had 2 feet of water in his basement in August due to massive rainstorms that dropped half a foot of water over his suburb in an hour. Storm drains backed up, and he had to tear out drywall, doors and frames, carpet, other things, because his professional photo studio was there. Had to install flow-back valves, too. And: no FEMA money, and a low-cost SBA loan if he wanted to have to repay the money (he passed on it).

Even my neighborhood, on a hill in NYC near the harbor, got some flooding due to the amount of rain—8-9"—that fell in a short time.

Here we are living in the future, and sometimes, it sucks...

The last thing most of us need is another expense added to this already-expensive hobby but there’s always this.

Nothing stopping this place from flooding the same way the basements did.

One thing I forgot to mention: if you have a 3D filament printer, you might want to start keeping your spools in a dry box if you don’t already, even if you weren’t flooded. There are a LOT of plans online for them, ranging from simply putting some silica in the bottom of a tub to installing ports and filament guides on the side of clear Sterilite boxes with sealed lids and multiple silica canisters. Heat and humidity cause problems, especially in seldom-used filament, and it’s not going to get any better. Even winters are no longer reliably dry.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Nothing stopping this place from flooding the same way the basements did.

My overflow storage is on the third floor of a tall one of these.  It doesn't eliminate all risk, but reduces it substantially.

Biggest potential issue: The building could burn down during the flood.  This happens.

Mike

I briefly had stuff stored in one of these when we were moving from the old house to this one.  I didn't want all the stuff stacked around while I was dealing with the move and starting my layout, so I stored it there.  It was on the ground floor, and a flood would have been ugly!