Flooded!
 

Folks, I'm going to hurry home after asking this, but I need your help now --

The ground floor of my parent's house has been flooded.

I'm not sure how bad the damage is, but I'm driving home after this to find out, and to dry out the palce -- the carpets, evertyhing in contact with the floor is sodden, as far as I've been told. (It's not from the weather, it's from a burst pipe or something somewhere, but apparently, the entire ground floor is soaked.)

So, yes. I'd appreciate any suggestions you'd have in dealing with this. Sorry for the lack of details, but I'll post more after I've seen the damage for myself. Thanks in advance!

Make sure you do it quickly. Also, after Katrina, we learned that it's really just best to chunk anything and everything the water had sunk into for an extended period of time; the mold risk was far too great. You actually may want to have someone come test for mold after you look over everything, honestly. Better to be safe than sorry.

Wow, flooding is the worst kind of home damage. It fucks up so much shit. Does insurance cover this?

For his sake, I hope it does. I don't recall if it is just Louisiana law or parish law (for those of you who don't know, Lousiana's counties are called parishes) but where I was located before the hurricanes hit and after made it mandatory to have flood insurance. After all that happened they're enforcing it even moreso.

I agree entirely.
When one of my relatives had an entirely flooded first floor, they had to, effectively, throw out anything that had been soaked for a few days. Later in the process, however, they hired some sort of a water cleanup company (it was something like that) to help assess the damage and help clean up. If it is affordable, that might be a good option as well. The first rule, though, is not to get sentimental over objects as you clean: if it's soaked, it must go. (Well, unless it's that important.)

Very true. It's always hard when you have to part with furniture, too. Actually, water seeped into our fridge. Now, we didn't have electricity for abou three months or so, so water + inasnely hot weather = one very nasty fridge. It's sterilised by now as we've cleaned it with almost pure bleach several times over, as well as putting two entire bags of charcoal and some vinegar in there. Even after letting that sit for a week to absorb the smell, the fridge still absolutely reeks of the meat that spoiled.

Long story short: In your case, I'd highly consider either chunking the fridge or bleaching the living daylights out of it, depending on how bad the rest of the house was damaged.