Bad yeast?

I've had some yeast in my fridge for a little while but not too long that it would be bad. The problem is, I had a really bad storm that knocked out my power for a few days. I ran my fireplace to keep the house warm but when I was sleeping it hit like 90 in here. Really close to my fridge that had all my yeast bank in it. I started a yeast starter a few days ago and it was slow to take off but it is going now. I noticed it smells different. It has a sour smell almost dead smell. I'm thinking there might be a lot of dead yeast cells and they are decomposing. I do not think there is a sanitation problem. I turned off my stir plate for a day and I didn't see anything strange so I kicked it back on. It's looking pretty healthy now but still has a slight off smell to it.

What should I do. Pitch this batch and order more yeast? Can I save it? I was thinking I could give it a nice wash. I could take it off the plate for 20 min, transfer the main part but leave the stuff the falls to the bottom to water then cold crash. I'd then pour off most of the volume of liquid and use the bottom to start a new starter. Would that separate the dead cells from the good cells pretty well and make it a good batch?

If this works I might just do this with each strain I have to get my bank restored. I have about 12 different yeasts that might be done.

The yeast should be fine; a lot of vials and smackpacks have suffered much greater indignities during shipping than yours did during the power outage. I've bottle-harvested yeast that was shipped from Belgium to Texas under what I assume were not ideal conditions. If you feed your yeast, you should get a floating krausen of live cells. You can skim that off and use it as the basis of a "clean" starter free of dead yeast.

Thanks kingwood. That's what I did. It's now in new wort to build up to colony.