Flood safety and flotation: what actually keeps you out of trouble

Prepare before the water arrives

Flood warnings usually give hours. Use them: move valuables and documents upstairs, fill containers with clean water, charge everything, put the car somewhere higher, and know where your electricity and gas isolators are.

Floodwater carries sewage, fuel and debris. Anything it touches needs cleaning or discarding, so raising belongings is worth more than sandbagging a door that water will find its way around anyway.

• Documents and medication upstairs in a sealed box
• Fill water containers before the supply is affected
• Know how to isolate electricity and gas safely
• Wellingtons and heavy gloves ready — not sandals

Flotation and boats: honest limits

A buoyancy aid is compact, cheap and works even if you never touch a boat. If you live in a flood-risk area with children, one per person is a sensible purchase.

Inflatable boats and rafts have a narrower use case than people imagine. On standing floodwater they let you move supplies or reach someone. In moving water, with submerged fences, cars and debris, they are hazardous — that is a job for rescue services with training and equipment.

• Buoyancy aid per person, sized correctly
• Inflatable boat with a working pump, checked yearly
• Throw line rather than entering the water yourself
• Whistle and light attached to each buoyancy aid

The survival scenario: rising water overnight

Water enters the ground floor at 02:00. The correct action is almost always to go up, not out: upstairs with your kit, phone, light, water and warm layers, and call for help. Walking out into moving water in the dark is how people die.

Prepare an upstairs kit for exactly this — light, water, food, warm clothing, medication, documents, radio and phone charging — so that going up is not the same as going without.