Planet Possible: Interview with Mary Long-Dhonau OBE

Planet Possible host Niki Roach discusses property flood resilience with guest Mary Long-Dhonau OBE, known in the industry as 'Flood Mary'.

Here in the UK since the autumn, we've had unsettled weather patterns and during December 2023, some areas across eastern Scotland and in central and northern England recorded rainfall more than 70 percent above average for the time of year.

And in January, we experienced our eighth named storm of the season, Storm Henk. That's brought widespread flooding of around 2, 000 homes alongside infrastructure, causing millions of pounds of damage and disruption. There are still 108 flood alerts, which is where flooding is possible, and 28 flood warnings, where flooding is expected.

Planet Possible host and former CIWEM President Nikki Roach and co-host Ian Withers, of the Wessex area of the Environment Agency, invited Mary Long-Donaugh OBE to discuss what it's like to experience flooding in your home and what you can do to prevent and prepare for it.

Mary is a property flood resilience champion known colloquially as ‘Flood Mary’. She supports and advocates for homeowners who've experienced flooding and Mary herself encountered life changing flooding in 2007.

Flood trauma fueled passion

Nikki Roach: Why are you so passionate about public awareness of flooding?

Mary Long-Dhonau OBE: Well, first of all, when I was flooded, I lived in Worcester, which is absolutely infamous for flooding.

We often see photos of Worcester with swans swimming in the street. I lived nowhere near a river, so I hadn't got the river, the sea, a stream or anything to make me think that I was at risk of flooding. I was just in a low spot.

I was the mother of five children and a jobbing soprano in tandem bringing up my children. The youngest child had just been diagnosed with severe autism and learning difficulties. He's 26 and has the mental capacity of a 15 month old toddler.

We were a doing up an old Victorian house to the extent we were pulling ceilings down and walls off, etc.

And my eldest son had got a long-term temporary downstairs bedroom. And one night, it had been raining hard, and he just called upstairs that his bedroom was full of flood water and it absolutely stank. That's the first time we were at flood risk. Apparently, the house had flooded before, but we hadn't been told by the previous owner. Had we known, we might have thought twice about buying it.

We also lost lots of things that were kept in a filing cabinet downstairs. I was saving little handprints from all my babies, all their playgroup and nursery and school pictures. Just one from a box for each of them that I planned on giving them on their 18th birthday, wrapped up in a ribbon. This is your life. And we lost the lot. That's the hardest thing to deal with, to lose your memories. To this day, it still makes me really upset. You can replace your sofas on your deep freezers and things like that, but not your memories. People are not prepared for being flooded.

So time and time again we see a reporter going into a flooded house where people have lost their photographs, their memories, and the children's toys are all floating over the floor.

The only thing I got was a leaflet from Environmental Health telling me to wash my hands if I touched flood water. It was ten days after I'd been flooded when they gave me that. So then I started researching what I personally could do to help my home recover after a flood.

I worked very closely with the Environment Agency and Seven Trent Water. I never shouted at them, I never raised my voice, I never pointed my finger. I was extremely nice to them, and in fact with both the area manager and the sewage flooding manager for Severn Trent, I became good friends as a result.

We got a pumping station for my own street, which has reduced the risk of flooding, and we also got temporary barriers, the very first temporary barriers ever tested in the country, along the riverbank in Worcester. That's another story of working together and not being angry and shouty and pointy. But at the same time, I researched what I could do to make my home flood recoverable, should I flood again. And I got help from builders to put in very basic concrete walls, yacht varnish on the skirting boards, and tiled floors and such like.

When we were flooded again in 2007, the pumping station was overwhelmed and that's another lesson that alleviation schemes reduce the risk of flooding, but it doesn't take it away, and that's something I passionately tell communities. When we did flood again, we were able to sanitise it, pump it out, get the fires lit and carry on living there with no insurance claim and no disruption to family life. That was my light bulb moment, so from then on, I have researched what could be done to keep the water out.

The current state of flood awareness

Niki Roach: You're known in the sector as ‘Flood Mary’, and I think what you do so beautifully is reminding us all of the human impact and cost of flooding. Do you think people are more aware than we were 20-25 years ago of their risk of flooding? Or do you think there's still a disconnect?’

Mary Long-Dhonau OBE: I work on something called the RAIN Project in Northampton and they have just conducted a study amongst people who live at risk of flooding in Northamptonshire. Most of them are aware that flooding is going to get worse due to climate change. A very high percentage of them have said in a recent survey that they're worried about climate change and flooding increasing.

One of the questions was: ‘are you worried about your flood risk increasing at your own home level?’ And the response to that was stunning. Staggeringly low. Most people didn't take on their flood risk at all. They don't believe their flood risk is increasing and a lot of them don't believe they're at risk of flooding. Now that opinion is magnified right around the country.

If I had a pound for every time somebody came onto my floodmobile and said they live on a hill and they aren't going to flood, or because they are nowhere near a river, stream, or sea, they aren't going to flood. And then, subsequently, I find out that they've had a huge localised downpour and those people that I've talked to have flooded. I've talked to many people who said they had a flood warning, but didn't think it would come, and it does and then they're devastated.

So that's why I do so many radio interviews, television interviews, conferences, and community groups, just to talk about how this could happen to you. A lot of agencies that manage flood risk are a bit worried about scaring people. I'd rather get them worried and get them thinking: ‘okay, I've got a flood warning, now what can I do?’ Rather than doing nothing.

Decade-high storms and rainfall hit UK

Niki Roach: Let's maybe just contextualise this because lots of our listeners are all over the world. What's happening at the moment in terms of the flooding landscape here in the UK?

Mary Long-Dhonau OBE: We had a lot of rain in December and at the beginning of January. And the ground really is saturated. It's like a sponge, and that sponge is full up. So the river catchments were filling far more quickly than they would do. I live by the river side and the River Severn is known to be a slow riser. You know that if it's flooding upstream in, say, Shrewsbury or Bewdley, that you've got 24 hours or so. But recent storms have made it rise rapidly. With steep-sided catchments teeming into the river and also the tributaries that feed the River Severn, it's risen at a ridiculous alarming rate.

And because everywhere is wet, the rivers are going into their natural home, which is the floodplain. And unfortunately, there are a lot of houses on floodplains that have been built historically as well as being built now. And those houses have been flooded. It's happened in Nottingham along the Trent, where we've seen floods almost as bad as 2020, when people were flooding on the Thames in Wraysbury and Oxford.

I've literally been walking people through on WhatsApp messages what to do and how to plan for it. It's very live. It's very now. And people are very, very frightened. It is incredibly frightening when you see a load of flood water coming to your home and you feel absolutely helpless as to how to deal with it.

Now, that's why I'm quite so passionate about property flood resilience. So for those people who don't live in the UK, that's really what we can do at a property level to:

1. Try and keep the water out
2. Make adaptations to the inside of the property to help it recover quickly.

For me, I've always focused on recoverability, whilst everybody would like to keep it out. If you haven't got recoverable measures in your home, then you will still be out of your home for up to nine months whilst you're being dried out, the plaster's been knocked off, the flooring's been put up, and the electricity has been reinstated.

Evidence has shown me that people have put in recoverable repair such as waterproof plaster and plaster boards, solid and plastic flooring and flood resilient and recoverable kitchens. A lot of the homes that I've visited have got their plug sockets up the walls and downstairs electricity isolated, so they can live upstairs until the flood water's gone, which is like pulling a big plug out! They chuck eco washing up liquid and eco disinfectant into the water, agitate it up, use a massive squeegee to force it out of the house and it leaves the house clean. They then light all their fires, open their windows and they can start the drying process.

The people along the River Severn don't tend to make insurance claims. Because they've made all these adaptations. This is not a picnic. It's hard work, but it is better to carry on living there, rather than forced to live in a caravan or alternative accommodation miles away, or living upstairs – which I did – and that was horrendous. In 2007, people were living in caravans for two years, sometimes at minus two with bubble wrap at the window, so it's just horrific.

Advice if at risk of flooding

Niki Roach: If you're not in the industry, how do you even find out if you were at risk of flooding? Where does that journey begin?

Mary Long-Dhonau OBE: Well, the journey begins with an environmental report that we always get when we're buying a property. But when you buy a property, you get absolute wodges of paperwork. A lot of people, majority of people, don't read the environmental report and don't see whether they're at flood risk. And I would like solicitors to start really banging the drum and saying, look: ‘are you aware that this property is at flood risk?’

And also signposting people as to what they can do if they decide to go ahead with that property, giving them perhaps the link to my Household Guide to Property Flood Resilience, so they can then weigh up the protection from surface water flooding such as putting up a barrier, self-closing air bricks, or flood doors. People don't care to be told: 'it's the environment agency's water', or, 'it's your local authorities or the water companies'. They don't care. It's flood water. It's in their house. They don't want it there. They didn't ask it to be there.

Another thing that I still despair of when I'm talking about people ringing for help is sandbags. There are sandbags everywhere in the news. My husband's just driven through Tewksbury and said to me he's glad I'm not there at the moment because there are sandbags absolutely everywhere. They're split open and there's sand all over the place. And of course that sand reduces the carbon capacity of those drains, and often when you go to a flooded area afterwards, there's sand in the drains.

I tested them, because we have to test all the flood products, the doors and the barriers etc, in a testing tank to get a certification, a kite mark, so we know they're fit for purpose. So I went along and I tested sandbags. Four sandbags failed in 59 seconds from turning the water on. So I thought: 'let's give sandbags a chance'.

So I built a barrier of ten sandbags. They failed in two minutes, five seconds from turning the water on. Suddenly I thought, let's try some wide gaffer tape on a door in a testing tank. So I did. I got some wide gaffer tape and I put it all around the door up to about a meter which you would with a flood barrier. We turned the water on and the water initially didn’t come through, and when it did it was minimal. And then the guy that was testing it removed the tape and it burst through the water. Even if it was leaking, it would keep a lot of water out. So now I can say with confidence: use some gaffer tape. It won't be as good as any kitemarked flood protection product, but it will give you time to move your stuff.

Adaptation and accountability the key to progress

Niki Roach: I was on your ‘floodmobile’. It's an amazing little mini-home. I saw your air bricks with non-return valves. There's all sorts of interesting stuff that you can do. If I were to give you the Planet Possible magic wand and you could make anything possible, what would you want to change?

Mary Long-Dhonau OBE: Adaptation to flooding could be on the top of our agenda, instead of thousands of people being displaced. That adaptation would come front and foremost of our thinking.

We cannot continue to build concrete walls around our entire country. We've got to think outside the box because I believe, and I've said for many years, that every flood alleviation scheme is going to be overtopped.

I worry about all our futures, because climate change is going to get worse. Even if we did something now, we're going to get worse and worse flooding. It keeps coming. We've really got to think about adapting the way we live and the way we use our countryside to slow that flow. We've got to start working with nature, not against it, because nature will always win.

I was quoted this week in many newspapers saying that we need government to “wake up and smell the flood water.” It's all very well for me to go on about homeowners taking more responsibility, but we've got to work in partnership. Unless we start getting leadership from the top to accept that things are really bad, and embracing what we can do to mitigate climate change, then those flood defences are going to over-top sooner than later.

This was an extract from Season 5, episode 5 of CIWEM powered podcast, 'Planet Possible', which skyrocketed to the top of the Earth Sciences podcast charts recently upon it's release on Friday 19th January 2024.

Listen to the full episode right here.

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