Webinar: Flood Mary - Are you and your business prepared for flood?
Flooding can turn everyday life upside down in a matter of minutes. One moment things feel normal; the next, you’re focused on urgent containment, protection and keeping people safe. The effects are wide‑ranging from property damage and displacement to financial strain and the emotional toll that comes with sudden disruption.
For many, the experience is marked by rapidly rising water levels, blocked roads, power or utility outages and the pressure to make fast, informed decisions. But with the right early warnings and preparation, much of that downtime and distress can be significantly reduced.
In this session, we’ll explore how communities, local authorities and insurers each play a vital role in response and recovery and how working together can make all the difference when flooding hits.
Learning Objectives
- Overview: What is it like to flood?
- Planning for a flood
- Inspirational case studies: homeowners and businesses protecting themselves from flood
- Recovering quickly after a flood
Speaker biography: Mary Long- Dhonau OBE
Mary has twenty-five years’ experience in supporting and advising the victims of flooding during their recovery. Having been flooded herself on many occasions, she champions the effective use of Property Flood Resilience (PFR) measures and is vocally passionate about raising awareness of flood risk and PFR /Build Back Better to homeowners, communities, local authorities, government and relevant industries, including insurance and construction. Mary spends much of her time travelling around flood effected parts of the country in a Floodmobile’/Floodpod, a trailer packed full of resilience produces Over the last three winters alone, she has spoken to around three thousand newly flooded people to advise them about PFR.
Mary has represented the ‘voice of the flood victim’ at government level, she appears regularly on national TV and radio during a flood event and speaks at many flood risk management national and international conferences.
Mary runs her own consultancy FloodMary.com specialising in PFR. She is the author of an eBook ‘Property Flood Resilience, Stories from homes and businesses who have made adaptations to help them recover more quickly after a flood’ Mary has recently published a new directory entitled ‘Making your Home Flood Ready’, a directory of Property Flood Resilience Products’ & Co- Authored the Household Guide to Flood Recovery.
She is an active member of the Steering Group and a member of the Property Resilience Round table. She has contributed to many research projects on flood-related topics She led the delivery of the community engagement for the Ox-Cam and spearheaded the award-winning Cumbria Property Resilience round table.
Mary was awarded an OBE for Services to the Environment in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2009. In Dec 14 she was awarded a HonRICS, in recognition of her high profile for standing up for the public interest regarding flooding. Mary was also given the ‘Voice of the Customer ‘award at the CII Public Interest Awards 2015 and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of the West of England in July 2015 and was made a Hon Fellow of CIWEM in May 2017. Mary was awarded the CIWEM possibility category ’Spotlight’ award at the annual Environment Agency conference in June 2024 and was a Big Issue ‘Changemaker’ for 2025
Venue
CII Accredited
