This time I am going to tell you about the flood damage I experienced a few years back. It was terrible, with everything in my office soaking wet and looking like it was ready to fall apart. My first thought was that all my documents and records were gone. When I first found out about Document Freeze Drying I thought my flood damage problems were all solved. After my office flooded, there were quite a few original documents that I needed restored. Fortunately most of the things damaged during the flood damage were replaceable or could be redone or were store on computer drives that had been backed up and stored somewhere else. So I was lucky that not very much needed to be restored. I had been under the impression that freeze drying was a miracle cure for what ailed my sopping wet flood damage papers. I was right and wrong.



Document Freeze Drying does indeed dry flood damage documents. It is a process that involves a few steps. The first being to freeze the flood damage documents at -40 Celsius, forcing all of the water out through vapors. After that process is complete, the documents are heated back up, at a slow steady heat, to room temperature. The good news is what is on the flood damage documents is retrievable. The bad news is this process can leave the documents brittle and prone to breaking apart.

What I learned after having some of my flood damage documents freeze dried is that this process is not a miracle cure. It is a means to an end. I needed the information that was on those flood damage documents. The company I took my papers to wrapped the wet flood damage documents in some sort of plastic and photo copied them before starting the freeze drying process. Through this I was able to retrieve quite a bit of information. Once the process was completed, I was able to retrieve the rest. I was not, however, able to get the flood damage documents back to their original form and once I had the information I needed, I had to redo the documents to match the original form.

While this was disappointing to me, as I really had thought the process restored the flood damage documents to their original state, it was still comforting to be able to get the information I needed from the documents. It is important to remember that flood damage document freeze drying can be a life saver in a situation like this and while it wasn't everything I had hoped for, it certainly helped more than I had expected. The best thing to do is to prevent the flood damage situation from happening in the first place. While most of the documents I had were backed up, not all of them were. Back up files every time you create them. Keep your documents in a water proof and fire proof filing cabinet or safe. Most importantly though, if you do need to retrieve information from ruined flood damage documents, know that document freeze drying can help you, it just doesn't perform miracles.