Drove through a puddle which was too deep for my car - advice with making an insurance claim

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My car is now in a dreadful state - the engine and electrics don’t work. I’m fully comp, but the wording in my policy says they’ll only pay if it was unavoidable flood damage. Not sure if this counts. If it helps, I didn’t see any signs warning about a flood from the direction I was coming.

Yes, good sign! It really is best to just be honest. They are trained in this and will spot any omission of truth a mile off. It was a genuine error and is understandable.

Stop scaremongering the OP , I had the car flood and he there was a red alert and insurance covered . It depends solely if the trip was essential and if the road was open . I was going to the pharmacy . 5 other cars got stuck after mine in the same place . It happens . Op you will be ok

I think the idea is that you start reversing before you are so far in that your exhaust is under water.

There’s a road near me like this. Floods every time it rains heavily and people break down as once it floods, it fills the absolutely massive hole in the road which unless you know it’s there, you wouldn’t be thinking to avoid it.
People are wrecking their cars there regularly but not always because of the water level so I don’t know where they’d stand with that.
It’s always being reported on Fix My Street but I’ve never seen it repaired.

If the car was parked up and unattended when the land it was parked on was flooded, then that is unavoidable.

It will still depend where you park and why you were parked there/how long for.

If you were on holiday for two weeks and the car park flooded and you had no way of knowing or moving your car, that's very different to choosing to park by a river in the middle of a flood warning.