When Mary Long-Dhonau’s home was overwhelmed by sewage, rats and dried faeces, she vowed no-one else should go through the same hell
When Mary Long-Dhonau’s home was overwhelmed by sewage in the great floods of 2000, her three-year-old son had just been diagnosed with autism.
“He lost his toys, his playroom,” Mary, 61, a former professional soprano, says. “I lost boxes of my children’s memories, hospital memorabilia, little handprints, the first drawing of Postman Pat.
“I had planned on wrapping them all with a big red ribbon and giving it to them when they turned 18. But everything got flooded and dumped into a skip.”
Her 11-year-old son’s bedroom was deluged with drain water. “I had to get the fire service to pump us out.” Mary didn’t live on an official floodplain. The worst of the flooding had come from a local sewage works swamped as the River Severn overflowed.
“Outside my gate, I had more condoms than I have ever seen in my life,” Mary says, “We were joking, at least we practice safe sex in Worcester – but it was hundreds and hundreds of them.
“It took nine months to put our house back together. I remember walking the streets on cold evenings because my son couldn’t tolerate the building noise. It was miserable. It is just tragic having your house annihilated by filthy stenching flood water.”
25 years on, with her wellies firmly on, the mother-of-five from Worcester is better known as ‘Flood Mary’ – after dedicating herself to fighting floods. Mary was awarded an OBE for services to the environment in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2009.
She has met with thousands of flood victims, teaches communities to prepare and recover from flooding, and even has her own ‘Floodmobile’ – a house on wheels packed with flood resilience ideas and products.
As rain falls across the country following the driest spring in more than 50 years, Mary has an urgent message for government ahead of next Wednesday’s Spending Review.
“To my absolute horror, I’ve learned of proposed cuts to the flood defence budget,” she says. “I can’t begin to describe how deeply worrying this is, not just to me, but to the thousands of people across the country who live with the daily reality of flood risk.”
A fortnight ago, Mary gave evidence at the Environmental Audit Select Committee at Parliament, where she gave an emotive speech on behalf of flood victims.
“I have spoken to more than two thousand flooded and traumatised people – some have been flooded twice in the same year,” she says now. “Imagine how you’d feel if your home had been violated by filthy, stinking floodwater, which ruined everything you’d worked so hard for, washing away your treasured memories.
“Even once you return, every time it rains, the fear floods back. And now, you’re told the government is considering cutting the funding, which could help reduce the risk of it happening again.”
The Department for Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says the Labour government is investing record sums on flood defences.
“Our sympathies are with all those affected by flooding,” a spokesman said. “This government inherited flood defences in their worst condition on record. Through our Plan for Change, we’re investing a record £2.65 billion over two years to repair and build more than 1,000 flood defences across the country, protecting tens of thousands of homes and businesses.”
With five million people in England and Wales living in flood risk areas – and people more likely to have their homes flooded than burgled thanks to the changing climate – Mary says she remains worried. She points to recent concerns about cuts aired by Baroness Brown, a member of the independent Climate Change Committee.
When we caught up with the campaigner at a Flood Mary workshop in Leicester, where she was helping flooded residents, she told us what she remembers even more than the rats and dried faeces left behind when the sewage subsided, is that she felt completely alone.
“When I got flooded, the only information I got was a leaflet on washing my hands if I came in to contact with flood water. I decided to do something about that.”
Roy Frisby, 56, tells Mary: “When we got the flood alert at 2am, I ran out and started knocking on all the neighbours’ doors to alert them,” says. “The water came so fast. My living room was like a swimming pool.
“My insurance placed me in a hotel from January to December 2024. I moved back home on the 20th December only to then be flooded again on January 6 this year – and I’m back in the hotel again.
“My brand-new kitchen that cost £14,500 is destroyed and has been dumped outside the house. My sofa and carpets, everything is gone.”
Dawn Eato, 67, says Roy was a hero for alerting his neighbours. “We received flood alerts the second time, so we knew it was coming and we moved a lot of stuff upstairs,” she says. “But we lost electronic items and furniture the first time. I’m retired, and didn’t have insurance.”
Council worker Chinonye Ndukwe, 50, tells Mary: “I live near the river, and we were flooded twice. The water just came in through the doors, it was knee high. It was so bad in 2024, three sofas, a fridge and a cupboard were lost, and my carpets were ruined.”
Lesley Edwards, 64, is there on behalf of her 85-year-old mother. “My mum has lived in her house for 64 years and 2024 was the first time she was flooded – she had to be rescued,” she says. “She had recently had new furniture but lost it with her washing machine, white goods and carpets. She is living with me until we get her home repaired.”
These people’s heartbreak is what keeps Mary on the road in her Floodmobile. “I don’t want people to go through what I went through,” she says. “I want to talk about how to plan for a flood, waterproofing your home, having plastic boxes to put your house contents in if you get flooded.
“I say to people, go into your living room and move anything below waist level. You can replace your sofa, or your washing machine with insurance, but you can’t replace sentimental things. Get memories out of harm’s way.”
The flooding that destroyed Mary’s property in the early winter of 2000 was the worst since 1947. 10,000 homes and businesses were flooded at 700 locations. Since then, climate change, population changes, and loss of green space has added further to flood risk, according to the Environment Agency.
“Thanks to climate change, flooding is only going to get worse,” Mary says. “Each flood means more damaged homes, broken infrastructure, ruined crops, and spiralling costs of repairs and damages. Entire communities can be left behind economically as they struggle to recover.
“The very idea of cutting the flood defence budget is preposterous. To follow through with it would be not only reckless but heartless.”
And with that Mary is off in her Floodmobile to the next place to teach more people about how to keep safe and recover from flooding. “People call me a one-woman army,” she says.
