How To Prepare For Floods And Survive Them

The Met Office’s State of the UK Climate report shows that the UK has more periods of heavy rainfall. As a result of changes in climate and increased building, flooding has become more common over recent years. This article will show you how to prepare for floods with both with long and short term measures. You will also learn what to do when floods happen and how to survive them.

What To Do To Prepare For Flooding

Any disaster is stressful, but the better prepared you are the easier it will be to cope with. You should start to prepare for floods long before there is any imminent flooding. As with any disaster, if you leave your preparation until the floods come, it will be too late. Preparing for floods includes gathering supplies, preparing your property for flooding and planning what you will do during a flood.

Know Your Flood Risk

The websites of the government environment agencies allow you to check the long term flood risk for your property. The flood risks include the risk of flooding from rivers or the sea, and of flooding from surface water. There are separate websites for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The two images below show examples of flood risks. The first is the flood risk from rivers and the sea for London. The second is the flood risk from surface water for an area of Kensington. The blue colours overlaid on the maps show flood risk, with the darker colour being a higher risk of flooding (From England Flood Warning Information Service, Open Government Licence v3.0).

You should understand the flood risk for your home. This will help you to prioritise preparing for floods compared to other disaster scenarios. If your home has a higher risk of flooding, spend more of your prepping time and budget preparing for floods. If your home has a low flood risk, you may want to consider other scenarios before you prepare for floods. Bear in mind that even low risk properties could still experience floods during extreme weather events. For every prepper, it is sensible to plan how you would deal with flooding.

These environment agency websites also show the short term flooding risk. Monitoring this risk will warm you if flooding is likely in the next few days.

Planning For Flooding

As with all prepping, planning for flooding is just as important as storing supplies and equipment. Without a plan for flooding, you may end up with a lot of equipment and supplies that you don’t need, or be missing vital items when the flooding happens. Every preppers plan will be different, depending on their circumstances, location, flooding risk and severity of potential flooding. The checklist below covers items that you should include in your flooding plan:

• Flooding risk and flooding warnings
  • Do you understand the flooding risk for your home?
  • Do you know where to get flood warnings?
  • Have you signed up to receive notification of flood warnings?
  • How long do you think flooding would last, and how long after flooding until you’re able to obtain more food and water?
    • Study previous flooding events nearby for a guide.
• During a flood, will you stay at home or leave?
  • Consider planning to stay at home only if the severity of flooding is very unlikely to cause risk to survival (shallow flooding with slow moving water may cause property damage but has a lower risk to survival, however any flooding can bring dirty water and sewage which can be dangerous)
    • If staying home, where would you stay? Are upper floors safe from flooding? Can you escape from upper floors if necessary and lower floors are under water
    • Will your supplies still be available/undamaged if the lower floor is flooded unexpectedly?
    • What will you do if flooding becomes worse than you expected?
  • Plan to leave if severity of flooding could cause risk to survival (risk of deep flooding or fast moving water)
    • Where will you go if leaving? Needs to be somewhere not affected by flooding and somewhere you know you will be able to access and stay.
    • How will you get there? Consider that some routes may be blocked by flooding or many other people trying to leave.
    • What will you do if you get stranded by flood waters or the roads are blocked by traffic? Will your kit be packed in a way that you can get your most important kit (i.e. bug out bag) out quickly if you have to abandon your car?
• What flood defences would you prepare your home with if flooding was imminent?
  • These items should be bought and stored before the risk of flooding becomes imminent
    • Worth spending more money if risk of flooding for your property is higher
  • When would you plan to set up any temporary defences? Do you know how to do this quickly?
  • What items would you want to move upstairs to reduce the risk of them being damaged? When would you plan to do this?
• Supplies for staying at home
  • Supplies for staying at home should allow enough to last for the duration of flooding as well as time afterwards when getting more supplies may be difficult. Take a look at the two week shelter at home plan for ideas.
  • Food – in watertight containers that will not be damaged if submerged during unexpected flooding
  • Drinking water – the mains water supply may be contaminated and not safe to drink so use bottled water
  • Sanitation – with mains water contaminated, you need a way to be able to wash, particularly if you have been in flood water. Bottled water for washing is great if you have enough, otherwise at least make sure you have plenty of hand sanitiser and wipes.
  • First aid – you may not be able to get assistance quickly; a well stocked first aid kit and knowledge of how to use it is important
  • Communication – how will you communicate with people and hear about any news relevant to your situation?
    • Mobile phone – power may be out, so solar battery pack to charge would be useful. May be no signal if nearby masts are out.
    • Battery powered radio for receiving news broadcasts – power may be out so ensure you have spare batteries
    • Visual communication methods in case you need to be rescued from your home
  • Torches with spare batteries
  • Spare clothing and blankets kept in a location well away from where flood water might reach it
• Bug Out Kit
  • Bug out bag for leaving at short notice if flooding worse than expected
  • Bug out bag + lower priority kit if leaving in a vehicle before flooding happens
• Clean Up
  • Flooding causes a lot of mess, and when the flood waters recede you’ll want brushes, bin bags, mops and buckets, disinfectant and cleaning products to be able to start cleaning up as soon as possible.

Flooding Defence Equipment

There are many ways that you can prepare your home for flooding, from structural modifications through to having a few bags of sand available. Survival is more important than the building and its contents, so you should always prioritise prepping for your survival and safety, however damage caused by flooding can become very expensive and take a long time to fix so it is worth investing in defences to protect your home if there is a risk of flooding.

The Osmo 3 metre flood defence barrier contains water absorbent gel. It is fairly flat when dry, but when it comes in to contact with water it expands and presses against vertical surfaces to form a flood defence barrier. It can be used across the bottom of a gate, wide door or garage door to prevent flood water from getting in, or it can be used to redirect water away from your property. They can be stacked to create a higher barrier.

Floodshield door barriers provide protection from flooding for doorways. They come in a variety of sizes to fit almost any door, and attach to the door frame without needing any drilling or brackets screwing to the door or frame. These flood defence barriers are not cheap, but well worth the cost if they prevent water from getting in to your house.

Air bricks are one of the easiest ways for flood water to get in to your house. Air brick covers are easy to attach to the air bricks if flooding is likely, and will prevent flood water from flooding the house through the air bricks.

Another route for flood water and sewage to enter the house, that is often overlooked, is through the drains and sewers. Flood water can fill the drains and sewers causing them to overflow back in to the house, pouring water and raw sewage inside. A non-return valve like this one allows water to flow one way, but not come back.

When it becomes obvious that there is a high risk of flooding in the near future, you will probably have little time to prepare. The better your long term planning was, the easier this will be to deal with. Put your flooding plan into action as soon as it seems likely that you will be affected by the flood. Prioritise your survival and safety over saving property.

Bug Out Before Flooding

If your plan is to leave before the flooding, make sure that you will have enough time to do this, and are not going to be stranded by flood waters or blocked by large amounts of traffic leaving. Pack your car, prioritising survival kit and making sure that you have a bug out bag with the most important items easily accessible in case you get stuck and have to abandon your car. Only if you are certain you have enough spare time should you start to move important property upstairs and set up your property’s flood defences before leaving.

Sheltering At Home During Flooding

If your plan is to shelter at home during the flooding, prioritise moving all the supplies you will need to survive during the flooding (water, food, sanitiser, clothing and blankets, first aid, communication equipment) upstairs to the location you are going to stay during the flooding. Turn off electricity and gas supplies as soon as it becomes obvious that the flood waters are going to come in to the house. Contact someone who is not affected by the flooding to let them know that you are sheltering at home during the flooding in case the situation becomes worse than expected and you need rescue. Only after you have prepared for your survival and safety during the flooding should you consider moving other property upstairs to protect it from the flood.

During flooding, make every effort possible to avoid entering the flood water. Flood water can contain raw sewage, bacteria and all sorts of other things that are bad for your health. If at all possible, do not wade in to the water, instead stay high up and out of the water. If you do come in to contact with the flood water, make sure you sanitise your hands.

Listen to broadcasts of news and weather updates so that you have an idea of whether the flooding is going to get better or worse. If possible, stay in contact with friends or family who are not affected by the flooding so that they know where you are.

In August 2004, extremely heavy rain falling over a period of 8 hours caused one of the most extreme flash flooding events ever in the UK in the village of Boscastle in Cornwall. The heavy rainfall was extremely localised, and caused the river level to rise by around 2m within an hour. It is thought that water then collected behind a bridge that was blocked with debris, until the bridge collapsed allowing the water to rush past in a 3 metre high wave, flowing down the main street of the village at around 10mph. A large amount of water flowing fast is more than enough to cause structural damage, and in the Boscastle floods many homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed. The video below shows the rescue efforts during the Boscastle flooding.

Flooding like this is fortunately still relatively rare in the UK, however it demonstrates situations that can occur with little warning. The Boscastle flooding was caused by very heavy and very localised rainfall over a period of 8 hours, and the flood water arrived in Boscastle as a large wave of flood water flowing down the river rather than water levels rising slowly.

What would you have done if you were in Boscastle when this happened? How would your flooding prepping have helped you to prepare? Would you do anything differently to your flooding prepping based on what happened in Boscastle?