Greensburg Tornado - computer damage

rpbird writes: "It's been a little over a week since two tornados destroyed my mom's home. I had been living there with her as her caregiver for several years. Me, my mom, and her two cats survived, but the house was reduced to kindling. A couple days later, several friends and I salvaged the small stuff from the house. My collection of Star Wars PC games was long gone, on Mars, maybe (KOTOR 2, Republic Commandos, Battlefront II, Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy, Dark Forces II). I guess it'll be a few weeks until Frangible's killing trandos in RC multiplayer. We found my two PCs (hand-built by me, as befitting a /. reader), and my NEC crt monitor, its screen undamaged. One of my two Toshiba Portege laptops survived, but their docking stations are toast. Most of this stuff is sitting in a cousin's garage — I'm at another cousin's house. The four hard drives are probably all right, but is anything else? Oh wise men of /., is it even worth trying to get the monitor and the PCs running, or should I strip out the hard drives and build new machines? What's the probability that the monitor and the PCs will run? Time is crunched for me right now, and I don't have any space yet to tinker in. Should I strip out the hard drives and junk the rest? Any advice would be appreciated."