In costal regions floods are not that rare. Waters that come with the flood soil everything they come across. So, what should you do to clean your belongings after flood waters recede? Flood soiling differs greatly from regular soiling, so a special cleaning technique should be applied here. Flood water in most cases contains all sorts of waste which means that harmful bacteria could be thriving in your fabrics. For better results you need to follow a certain procedure. First of all, try to get rid of dry stains. Shake and scrape all the dirt to make it fall off your fabrics. At that stage of cleaning you also need to try to take away mildew that often appears on fabrics after flood. All this can be potentially dangerous, so it is better to perform all the operations wearing rubber gloves. A special mask can also be helpful because mildew can spread harmful spores. At this first stage of cleaning no water should be used. Fabrics prewash is another step to take. For fabrics prewash only cold water has to be used. Some detergent powder can be added. Modern washing machines have an easy-to-use fabrics prewashing cycle, so if your washing machine has such an option you can use it. As long as bigger amount of water is needed for the fabrics prewash, try to make smaller load. Soak your things in that water for a while before starting fabrics prewash. If there are any heavy stains present on your fabrics then you will need to give the garments a pretreat. Prewash works fine with oil based stains like fats, cooking or motor oil but if you have protein based stains, grass or blood, for example, you will need a presoak procedure. Right after prewash you can put your clothes on the drying rack, but do not dry it completely and do not use a dryer. After that you can proceed to the actual washing. At this stage hot water can be used for cleaning. In fact, it is better to switch temperatures as high as the fabrics label recommends. That will help to kill most of the bacteria that can be present in your fabrics. To ensure better results, add a squirt of disinfectant. After that you can even use some sort of bleach, if the label allows. But be careful with bleach because it contains very aggressive agents and in case stains have a lot of iron, rust can easily occur. Such rust stains are much harder to eliminate than just iron stains. But if this happens, you can use one of the commercially available rust removers. You can also use oxygen-bleach that contains no aggressive agents and which will not cause any rust. Such bleach will also help you to do away with the terrible smell that usually occurs after flood in fabrics. If you do not have oxygen-bleach, the obnoxious smell can be removed with sanitizing agents that usually contain aromatizers. And it is very important to keep in mind that drying will put all the stains even harder into your fabrics, so do not use dryer and do not press your fabrics until you have impeccably clean clothes. If all these procedures are done in a proper way, you will have a nice and clean fabric.