Councillors have called for every town and village in Aberdeenshire to create a specialised flood action plan in the event of future storms.
Members of Aberdeenshire Council’s Kincardine and Mearns area committee said that more needed to be done to educate residents across the region on how to react if homes and businesses were at risk.
Councillors called for “named persons” in every community to take the reins during future floods, who would be responsible for opening up the doors of buildings such as halls and schools as places of refuge.
Mearns councillor Jean Dick said: “We have had a wake-up call and we really have to do something about it. We need to have named persons in each ward. We need to have identifiable people with a plan.
“I know this sounds alarmist but it is needed. Look at Ballater, food was one of the things they needed after the flooding.”
Some 600 homes and 100 businesses were hit by flooding in the two weeks after Storm Frank struck on December 30.
In the Kincardine and Mearns area, the North Esk and Maryculter areas were among the worst affected – with three homes flooded out in Marykirk.
Fellow ward member, George Carr, said every community should have the “basis of a plan in place”.
He added: “I don’t think we are quite there yet. I think every village needs a resilience plan and every village needs to know what that plan is. In Marykirk people didn’t know what was the official refuge.
“I think we must have a person who is responsible for the keys should any incident occur.
“It needs to be more widely adopted, so we don’t have folk coming to open doors with keys from Banchory, when the resilience [team] needs people from that community itself.”
Kincardine and Mearns area manager, Willie Munro, agreed: “It does need to be the community’s plan.”