The Survival Guide › Floods and Flash Floods
🌊Floods and Flash Floods
The most dangerous thing about a flood is how ordinary a foot of water looks from a driver’s seat.
What actually kills people. The CDC finds that over half of all flood-related drownings happen when a vehicle is driven into flood water. The National Weather Service is blunt about the numbers: six inches of fast-moving water can knock an adult over, twelve inches will carry away most cars, and two feet will carry away SUVs and trucks.
Before
- Learn your elevation and whether the land around you drains anywhere. Flash floods happen in places that are not on a flood map.
- Keep the important documents somewhere you can grab in one movement, in a waterproof bag.
- Know two routes out that do not cross a low bridge or an underpass.
- Standard home insurance does not usually cover flood damage. Find out what yours actually says before you need to know.
During
- Turn around. Do not drive through it, however shallow it looks, and however well you know the road.
- The road under the water may not be there any more — moving water scours out the surface from beneath.
- If water rises around a stopped car, get out and go to higher ground while the doors still open.
- Move up, not out, if you are on foot and cut off. Roof, not attic, unless the attic has a way out.
- Stay out of moving water on foot, and out of standing water that may be carrying a live line.
After
- Flood water carries sewage, fuel and whatever was in the shed upstream. Treat everything it touched as contaminated.
- Do not drink from the tap until the utility says it is safe.
- Throw away food that touched flood water, including anything in sealed packaging that is not a metal can.
- Photograph everything before you start pulling out carpet.
The thing people get wrong
“My car is heavy enough.”
Buoyancy does not care what your car weighs. Around twelve inches of water displaces enough to float most vehicles, and once it floats it steers nowhere. Two feet moves a loaded pickup. The water on the road is also usually deeper in the middle, where you cannot see the dip.
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Sources: National Weather Service, FEMA, CDC and CPSC. Informational only, and no substitute for what your local emergency services tell you on the day — when officials say go, go.