As climate breakdown puts millions more people at flood risk, traumatised homeowners are finding common voice
Darren Ridley is always on high alert, constantly checking his phone for rain warnings – even in the middle of the night.
“Our whole family is permanently on edge,” he says. “If we hear rain, day or night, we’re up and checking the house. I can’t sleep without replaying our flood plan in my head for weaknesses.”
Ridley’s house in Folkestone floods at least twice a year. His garden far more often. Most of the floods happen at night or in the early hours of the morning. “The floods come so quickly that it’s unbelievable. We often wake up to find our garden a metre deep,” he says.
And it is not clean water. “It’s raw sewage; a raging torrent that crashes in with more force than you could believe,” he says. “My elderly neighbour got knocked over by a heavy timber board swept along by the flood waters. He thought he was going to drown in sewage.”
