Hello:

Best wishes for the holidays!

I live off the beach, about 2 miles, when suddenly, a 20 foot wave began moving at the shore line, and ended up on Hylan Boulevard located in Staten Island, NY.  My back yard had 4 feet of water. My car floated down the street.  It was inspected by the insurance company and flag as completely total. This was salt water from the ocean, with the combined water from the marshes located on the right of Seaver Avenue. 

My 7 fig trees were flooded almost to the top of the branches for about several hours.  The next day, the water subsided. 

My question is:

 Are my fig trees and garden soil destroyed and/or contaminated by the polluted water?

Regards,

Tony .....

Run sprinklers it will push salt water down rinse the trees good you should be ok

If the soil was pretty wet, already, then the plants were "full" of water and were not tempted to take a deep drink. if they were on the dry side, then then would take up water until they were "full". They they might be damaged in a way that is similar to what happens when you fertilize a dry plant - you get a burned plant. You probably have a high water table, so it may be difficult to flush the salts out by watering without over saturating your soil, but Tony is right, the way to remove salt is to irrigate and flush it out of the root zone.

Thank you.  

Will soak them down tomorrow to flush out all the pollution.....  Keep my fingers cross.

Thank u all,

Tony

Tony,
    I have seen some amazing recoverys in plant life in general, and fig trees in particular. What appears  to me to be totally dead, somehow still has life deep inside, and in it's own time makes a remarkable recovery. The general opinion is that fig trees are delicate and fragile. I don't find this to be true. I think that fig trees have a remarkable strength deep in their root system that gives them the ability to overcome adverse conditions and come back again and again to live, and grow, and produce. The people of New York are strong and the people of Staten Island are exceptionally strong, and the fig trees in that place will flourish once again.
                                             Sincerely,

Your soil is not destroyed.  It will recover but it may take a while for the salt to leach out.  Hopefully your fig trees will be ok but that much salt water may have killed them.

Make sure you flush as much as possible.  if they are in containers, I would try lifting out the root balls and rincing them really well for a couple of days.  The important part is to leave them in standing water for a long period as the roots will begin to rot.  You main enemy is the salt, not the pollution.  If you take care of the roots, the tree should recover.

The base of fertilizers is salt - so I keep my fingers crossed your tree will be able to transform the salt into food and will make recovery in no time.  Keep us informed.  Best of luck there.

I went through 2 hurricanes, Rita in 2005 and Ike in 2008.  The worst damage was south of me where the storm surge hit.  These areas lost most of their trees.  The only trees that lived were mostly Live Oaks and a lot of them died also. 

Tony, I too suffered the hurricanes that Chapman mentioned. I had 5 to 6 foot of Gulf water on my property as did my neighbors. Most fig trees survived unless they were damaged by the wind or the surge.

"gene"