This shows how water can damage hardwood flooring. The hardwood flooring was 3/4" thick, 5" wide, hand-scraped and pre-finished on the top. Although, it was unfinished on the sides and the bottom of the hardwood flooring.
The water traveled thru the cracks where the hardwoods met and absorbed into the hardwood flooring and into the sub-floor. In this situation in order to clean, disinfect, and properly dry the sub-floor we had no other choice but to remove all the hardwood flooring that was located above the saturated sub-floor.
The owner of the home was astonished that the water traveled as far as it did and could cause that much damage. After the dry-out phase was completed we installed new hardwood flooring and made the disaster "Like it never even happened."