We were the last house on the road to flood. By the time the water reached our gate, we had watched our neighbours leave for two hours. We didn’t leave because we kept thinking it would stop.
It didn’t stop. By 04:00 the ground floor was three feet under. Everything that could float, did. Everything that couldn’t, didn’t.
The river does not care that you have lived in the house for thirty years.
Insurance covered the structural repairs. It did not cover four years of slow, careful changes. We rebuilt with an internal step at the door. We moved the electrical sockets six inches higher than the code required. We dug a French drain along the boundary. We started thinking about water the way our grandparents probably thought about it — as something that could come for you.
We installed a 4,000-litre rainwater system in 2024. Not for drinking. We have piped supply for that. We installed it because the rooftop was sending fifteen thousand litres of water a year into a storm drain that, in 2021, had not been able to take it. Now most of that water sits in our tank, gets used for laundry, gets used for the garden, and is gone by the next monsoon — making room for the next batch.
It is a small contribution. If every house on the street did it, the storm drain would not be full when the river is. That is what changes during a flash flood: not the amount of rain, but the amount of rain the drainage can accept before the river rises.
I do not think rainwater harvesting prevents floods. I think it gives us a margin. After 2021, a margin is enough.