My house has been flooded - Advice?

[rIcK]

Hello folks! I live in a Bungalow in Manchester.

I woke up yesterday about 8am to someone banging at my door as the nearby river broke its banks and water was quickly building up outside.

We scuppered around generally moving things higher up on to worktops. I grabbed my most prized possessions then quickly moved my car to higher ground.

We then moved to someone's local flat and spent the day hanging around there without power and surrounded by water. Finally about 6pm the water started to receed and we carried our possessions and a few folding bikes and waded through the water past about 10 fire engines. Hopped on our bikes and cycled to Manchester city centre towards safety and finally a bit of food.

So now I'm waiting for the water to receed to be able to go back. We had a brief glance inside and it looks like the water rose to sky 4 inches inside. Through our floorboards / door and was hoping people may have advice?

First thing will obviously be insurance, but if anyone has experience or similar with a flooded house then that would be great!

And a few pictures from later as we escaped and water came higher.

 

[rIcK]

We have been planning on renovating for many months, had planning permission to extend and the plan was to completely gut it etc. The house was fairly bare so we didn't have many rooms with carpets.

I've been doing up a few rooms over the past few months to make it a bit more liveable because we have been living in complete squalor the last few years. Got myself a decent fridge, washing machine etc for the next 6 months before we started renovation so we can live a little better. Then this happened

This whole event has obviously scuppered plans so now I'm questioning if we even spend the money renovating and or making the building flood proof.

We saved a lot of items due to putting them on counter tops etc.

I went back today and removed my expensive NAS / amplifier, speakers and subwoofer and moved it into self storage. Threw away all my food from the fridge. Power was still out.

Here are a few pics of my little bits of improvement in our gross little house over the past few months. I now have no clue what to do... It doesn't really feel worth fixing it up to then potentially gut it anyway during our extension / renovation in about 6 months time. Feels like it would be nice to get some form of payout and start rippling out walls, but I doubt that's an option

 

[rIcK]

Here is a quick walk round the next day (this afternoon) after all the water has receeded. You can see the dirty marks where the water has come up a few inches in my bedroom and in the bathroom the worst. (Back of the house)

The living room and spare junk room with my bikes don't seem to be as bad, but you can see the damp residue everywhere.

 

[rIcK]

Two brompton bikes - you can afford it (y)

Good job we had our Bromptons! Otherwise getting away / back would have been a nightmare given my car was trapped behind over a meter of water!

 

[rIcK]

will all house insurance deal with this? i ask as i thought you had to have insurance that specifically included flood damage, which most wont, and will cost a chunk extra to include, to have them cover situations like this.

i like right near a small river that flooded about 20 years ago. council since did a load of work and installed a large flood barrier, however insurance companies don't care about this installation. out latest provider didn't include flood damage, so curious would i still be covered if something simliar happened to me as what the op has?

My buildings insurance is combined with some flats on my estate. That covers flood damage.

My contents does too.

It's never flooded before and officially had a 0.1% chance of flooding. I guess we got that 0.1%

It wasn't even raised when I bought it, only found out later on.