Stay Afloat: Flood Preparedness Toolkit for Local Businesses

The Town of Groton wants to help local businesses reduce flood risk today to help lower the cost of damages in the future. This flood preparedness toolkit makes learning about your flood risks and taking action to protect your business simple.

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), just one inch of floodwater can cause up to $25,000 in damage. It is crucial to be prepared, especially as hurricane season approaches for Connecticut. Forecasts suggest a potentially active season with up to 25 named storms in 2024, emphasizing the need for readiness. However, it is not only large storms that can be destructive. Smaller flooding events, like the ones we have experienced the past two winters, can also cause damage.

Our goal is to assist you in navigating your flood challenges. Our toolkit has resources to help you learn about your flood risk, protect against damage, and connect to funding programs – check out the documents on the right for those resources that feature:

• Infographics on important flood preparedness topics
• Quick links to direct resources that can help you prepare
• Summery of different flood topics, such as flood insurance, to be aware of

Planning ahead can save you time and money. Flooding from coastal storms and heavy rainfall can wreak havoc on commercial buildings. To top it off, forecasts predict that flooding will happen more often and that flood waters will deepen. Even if you haven’t flooded before, you may in the future. Flooding doesn’t only affect a business by impacting its building – flooded roads can cause supply chain disruptions and make it challenging for employees and customers to reach you.

However, there are things you can do to prepare and protect your business. Our toolkit has low and no cost suggestions, as well as sources of funding to help you. Doing this work today can save you in the future - businesses impacted by Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Harvey avoided $4.57 in losses for every $1 they had invested in resilience action before the storms.

Have questions about the toolkit? Need help using its resources? We can help you use the toolkit to increase your resilience to flooding impacts. Please contact anyone from the team, we are here to answer your questions. We also need to hear from you. let us know what you think of the toolkit, how we can improve it, and how we can help you use it by taking the survey linked on this page.