If there is any silver lining to the economic destruction happening right now, in a few years I hope to see strong businesses that were started during this time.
Having one or more floods a year was a fact of life and the local store owners would design their stores to deal with that. The best example was a newsagent (remember those?) that had their magazine/greeting card shelves on jacks. Fully loaded racks of magazines would be jacked up 6ft or more, the water would come through the store, they'd hose out the tiled floor, and be back up and running within two or three days.
And then the town built a levee that would deal with everything except 1-in-100 year floods. So the town didn't flood for 10 years or more. People became complacent, and new store owners had no experience (nor plans) for how to empty their stores should the levee be overtopped.
The first time the levee was overtopped, the old timer shop keepers started to prepare their stores for the flood waters (emptying stock, removing electronics, etc.). A surprising number of newer shops literally did nothing, even when the government was telling people the levee wasn't going to prevent a flood. And, predictably enough, a lot of the newer stores literally never came back.
Moral of the story (if there is one)? It can be hard to prepare for bad times if you've only ever known the good times.
Out of curiosity, which town are you talking about?