Water, water everywhere

I have never been flooded out of my home.  I have never had to place sandbags against my door and huddle upstairs as floodwater lapped against my lovingly painted living room walls. I have never had to steer a dinghy down the main road. The person living in the flat above mine once overfilled the bathtub, but the water streaming down my walls only caused a puddle. 

Despite this, I was filled with alarm when I saw Prudential's warning that millions of home could be flooded this winter as storms co-incide with high tides - and for very good reason.

Last year, I visited Carlisle  ten months after some parts of the city were badly flooded.  What I saw there was enough to make me ring my insurer and demand a complete run down on what would happen if I was ever flooded out of my fifth floor flat.

I walked down roads which had been under three feet of water at the beginning of last year. But some forty weeks later, only a fraction of homeowners were back in their houses. The streets were littered with skips, and there was a continuous drone from dehumidifiers struggling to dry out sodden walls.

Imagine having to live upstairs in your house for six months, not being able to access your living room or kitchen and having to fire up the primus stove every time you fancied a cuppa.  I spoke to many families who were forced to live in this way, simply because they happened to live in an area of the city which was flooded. Their cheerfulness was a lesson in not sweating the small stuff, but still they said that their home being flooded was a dreadful experience.

What emerged from my conversations with residents was that how an insurer reacts can make a huge difference to the devastation they felt. I spoke to some couples whose insurer, Lloyds TSB, had immediately set up an emergency office in the city.  The disaster recovery team booked alternative accomodation for Lloyds customers and co-ordinated the repair of their homes. One customer said: "We could call the team at any time to find out how the work was progressing and for reassurance that everything was as it should be."

But other insurers were less quick off the mark, leaving flood victims to find their own alternative accomodation. This was not an easy task in a city where hundreds of people had been rendered homeless overnight, and some were forced to stay in their homes despite the devastation caused by the water.  Some insurers also left it to homeowners to find workmen to carry out repairs.  Again, this was nigh on impossible, even with workmen flooding down from Scotland to try and fulfil demand.

Perhaps the worse off were families who had no insurance at all.  Not only did they have to find workmen to help them, they had to foot the bill as well.

So if you think you could be hit by flooding, take heed of what happened in Carlisle. Phone your insurer and ask what exactly it will do for you should your home be hit by flooding. Every insurer is likely to charge higher premiums if you live in a flood plain, but you might as well make sure that the extra money is worth it.

And if your home has been flooded in the past, tell us how your insurer reacted....