As a brilliant ground instructor of mine once said "this is where you find out that adrenaline is both brown AND sitcky!"
Hi Pete!
I wasn't aware of rehydration problems caused by de-icing fluid but I did see the program about the Alaska Airways incident just off the LAX coast. This apparently (and let me be guarded here) was caused by the worm-bogie arrangement that raises and lowers the stabilator being sheared. In fact the worm had come out of the bogie arrangement all together!
Apparently this was due to the fact that the arrangement needed greasing and the retaining nut although there was not designed to stop the arrangement coming apart
.
It highlighted that the system was not fail safe.
(This was as I understood the program and I do not want to appear to be apportioning blame to Boeing, MD or Alaska Airlines).