Time Frame For Dealing With Flooded Carpet
Depends on a lot of unknowns; temperature, humidity, carpet material, how dirty it is etc. etc. Could be as short as hours though, days at best, but not weeks.

You need to dry out that carpet immediately. I would call a "starving student" moving company or someone like that and have them move the "collection" somewhere like a storage site or one of those temporary containers they put in your driveway (PODS is one company I see, stands for Portable On Demand Storage), that way your relatives can pick through it at their convenience.