You will not see the nail in the silt. You will feel it later. Houston yards after a flood are a junk drawer: fence wire, sign stakes, crab-trap scraps if you are near the water.
Any break in the skin that met floodwater is dirty. Rinse it. Cover it. Watch it.
If you cannot remember your last tetanus shot, say that out loud to a clinician. This is a week they expect that question.
Do this now
- Get out of the water if you are cut. Rinse with bottled or boiled-then-cooled water if the tap is under a boil notice.
- Apply pressure for bleeding. Call 911 if you cannot stop it or a wound is deep.
- Cover the cleaned wound. Keep working only if you can keep it dry and you have real boots.
- Seek urgent care or an ER for puncture wounds, red streaks, fever, or a forgotten tetanus shot.
The injuries people shrug off
A slice on the shin from a dislodged threshold. A puncture through sneakers. A fire-ant raft on the calf. Those get infected in this heat.
Do not close a dirty puncture with tape and a prayer. Do not soak it in the same floodwater to ‘clean it.’
If you take daily steroids or have diabetes, you get seen sooner, not later.
Work setup so you get fewer cuts
Boots, gloves, a magnet or a careful rake before you kneel. Do not reach under a floating sofa with a bare hand.
Shine a light. Power-out houses hide the rebar in the closet.
Keep a small clean-water bottle just for wounds, separate from the drinking stash, so you are not rationing the wrong thing when someone yells.
Health over a closed wall
CDC’s flood cleanup page and EPA’s mold page both treat wet cavities as a health job, not a weekend bleach project. If anyone in the house starts coughing or wheezing, get them out of the work zone. A TDLR mold assessor is the Texas license to look up when a company wants to diagnose and remediate in the same breath.
Do this next
- Floodwater categories: clean, gray, and black water
- Sewage backup in the house: immediate steps
- Water cleanup hub
More in Mold, sewage & health right after.