Last week, I was assigned to do hurricane Harvey flood rescues. as a result of this, I spend almost 36 hours wearing a duty belt that was submerged in flood water over and over again. During this period, I was carrying a gun I keep around entirely for these sorts of operations, namely and early Gen 3 Glock 19. The weapon and spare magazines were loaded with 124 +P 9mm Federal HST's. The water I was in was not salty, but was contaminated with a variety of substances I prefer not to spend too much time thinking about (think required tetanus shot and prophylactic antibiotics this week). Here is a summary of my observations from this:
1 The ammo held up well. After this, I assumed at lease some of it was compromised, so I stopped by the range and shot all of it out of a Beretta 92F this week. Every single one of the 46 rounds I was carrying fired exactly as designed, with no apparent loss of accuracy of velocity.
2. My TLR-1 still worked and was dry inside when I changed the batteries
3. The Glock had some very light surface rust on the slide, inside and out, the barrel looked like it sustained no damage, There was some brown stuff in the striker channel (I assume rust from the striker spring) and the sights had some light surface corrosion (Ameriglo Spartan operator sights). Other than that, it was in pretty good shape.
3. My Safariland 6280 (STX size 832) shows no effects. dried out overnight after I was finally able to get home, the hood functions fine, the suede didn't de-laminate and it doesn't even stink.
All of my clothes received a Viking funeral. My Waders were abandoned early on as they kept filling up due to excessive water depth