‘Everyone’s trying to tread water’: The battle of a small business hit by flooding

Last month, the English county of Buckinghamshire limped through its wettest September in records dating back 188 years.

Weeks of downpours led to severe flooding on 22 September as rivers burst their banks, inundating more than 500 properties with water. 

While the immediate focus is rightfully on rescuing people and restoring homes, climate-change-fuelled flooding is also taking a serious toll on local businesses. 

Melissa Kimbell, director of Awake Organics - a natural hair, skin and body care range - says her team is working through “a crisis” after flood water poured through their facility on the outskirts of Olney town. 

‘Rivers of water appeared from almost nowhere’

Late that Sunday evening, Melissa’s husband James received a call to say that the office - located on a family-run farm - had at least a foot of water running through it like a river. 

He jumped in the car but only made it 10 minutes before the road became impassable, with stalled-out vehicles abandoned in ditches. “It looked quite apocalyptic,” he told her. James turned around and prayed, waiting for the morning when they could assess the damage.

Meanwhile Melissa, who was visiting family in Canada at the time, woke to a flurry of Whatsapps and photos of what the team discovered on 23 September. 

“My heart sank,” she told customers in an email earlier this month. “When something like this happens, it's deeply upsetting. So much of what we've created here was soaked and covered in thick mud in a matter of hours.”

Water was still coming from every direction, James told her, running off the fields, overflowing from a culvert and gushing out of a drain “like a geyser”.

The team got to work at once, however; salvaging furniture, ripping out the floor, cleaning and drying files. Fortunately, a “nothing on the floor” policy meant that stock loss was minimal. But weeks of clean-up have been a huge drain of time and energy.

Given the volume of claims in the area, the landowner’s insurance company has only visited once so far; the team had to take matters into their own hands to save the business. 

What is the impact of flooding on a small business?

In the first couple of days of the floods, the local community pitched in to help each other, Melissa says.  But “everyone’s just trying to tread water now.”

The months leading up to Christmas are a crucial time for small businesses like Awake Organics, which prides itself on using organic and sustainable ingredients. ‘Peak’ sales determine how much the company can market and grow in 2025.

But instead of launching new products, the team is well behind schedule and squeezed into the one part of the building that escaped the floods.

A supportive customer base has been a huge boost to morale, Melissa says. “My hope is that when you open your order,” she wrote, “you'd never know we are really rolling up our sleeves over here.”

Were the Buckinghamshire floods driven by climate change?

“This experience has given me a whole new appreciation for communities who have endured far worse, and at this moment in time my thoughts and prayers are with others across the UK, and the people of North Carolina and Florida,” she added, as Hurricane Milton swept across the States.

Coming from Canada, Melissa is no stranger to the impacts of climate change. A few years ago, her home in Calgary was badly damaged in a hailstorm of golf-ball-sized hail, she says. “It looked like the house had been shot with a machine gun or something.”

But the business owner said the flood arrived out of the blue for the Buckinghamshire community. “It definitely gives me pause to think about what's in the future in an area like this,” she says. “I wouldn't want to go through this again.”

The country has its wettest September in records dating back to 1833, the Met Office tells Euronews Green, with 176mm of rain falling. That’s 318 per cent of the long term average for September.

“We saw record levels of rainfall in some parts of the East of England during the recent flooding,” a spokesperson for the Environment Agency says. Over the border in Bedfordshire, one rain gauge in Flitwick recorded 12.6mm of rain in just 15 minutes.

“Our climate is changing, sea levels are rising, and we are experiencing more extreme weather. The most recent climate change predictions confirm we will experience wetter winters and drier summers, with an increased likelihood of more intense rainfall leading to flooding.”