Storm and Cyclone Prep for Aussie Homes (Coastal NSW to FNQ)

By the I Do It Yourself team — Cal, Mick, Ash and Steve.

The cyclone season in northern Australia runs from November to April every year, and the east-coast lows that hit NSW and southern QLD can drop 100 km/h gusts in any month. Insurance Council of Australia data shows storm damage was the single biggest natural-hazard insurance category in 2024 — $4.8 billion in claims across the year, with most of that concentrated in the cyclone belt from Bundaberg up to Cairns and across to the Top End. The expensive bit isn’t the storm itself; it’s the preventable damage. Trampolines that weren’t tied down, sheds that weren’t anchored, gutters that hadn’t been cleared, and roofs that hadn’t been inspected since the last big event.

This guide is written for any Australian homeowner who lives anywhere a serious storm can hit — which is, realistically, all of us. Across five phases we’ll walk through outdoor prep (Cal), structural prep (Mick), electrical safety and generators (Ash), wet-weather sealants and door seals (Steve), and the post-storm checklist. Every recommendation is based on either the Australian Standards (AS 4055, AS 4989, AS 1170.2) or the Bureau of Meteorology and Insurance Council guidance from the last decade of major events.

Understanding the wind regions in Australia

Australia is divided into four wind regions under AS 1170.2 (Structural design actions — Wind actions). Knowing your region tells you what your house should already be built to handle:

Region A — Normal: most of southern Australia (south of Brisbane, all of VIC, TAS, SA, southern WA). Design wind speeds 28–45 m/s (100–162 km/h). Trees, fences and unsecured items are the main risks.
Region B — Intermediate: coastal QLD from Brisbane to Bundaberg, parts of coastal NSW. Design wind speeds 45–60 m/s (162–216 km/h).
Region C — Tropical Cyclone: coastal QLD from Bundaberg to Cooktown, NT Top End, north WA coast. Design wind speeds 50–66 m/s (180–238 km/h).
Region D — Severe Tropical Cyclone: the Pilbara coast in WA. Design wind speeds 60–88 m/s (216–317 km/h).

If your house was built post-1985 and in Region C or D, it’ll have cyclone-rated tie-downs (engineered straps connecting roof to walls to slab), cyclone shutters or laminated glass on windows, and engineered roller doors on the garage. Pre-1985 houses in cyclone country were often upgraded after Cyclone Tracy (Darwin 1974) and Cyclone Althea (Townsville 1971), but not always — get a building inspector’s report if you’re unsure.

Phase 1: Outdoor prep — the things the wind picks up first

Cal here. No dramas — outdoor prep is where 80% of preventable cyclone damage gets stopped. The Insurance Council reviewed claims from Cyclone Debbie (2017) and Cyclone Marcia (2015) and found that more than half the insurance damage in residential areas came from objects that weren’t tied down — trampolines, garden furniture, BBQs, garden sheds, kids’ play equipment, even pot plants. The wind picks them up, throws them through windows, and the cascading damage from there is enormous.

The pre-season checklist for outdoor gear:

Trampolines: AS 4989-2015 (Trampoline safety) prescribes four ground anchors with a holding force of 250 kg minimum each for residential use. Cheap auger anchors from the discount aisle won’t cut it — you want either heavy-duty concrete-embedded anchors or proper marine-grade auger anchors driven 600 mm into firm ground. For Region C/D, dismantle the trampoline frame entirely when a cyclone warning is issued.
Garden sheds: if cyclone-rated, they’ll be anchored to a concrete pad with engineered cyclone ties. If not, dismantle or stow inside before any serious storm. A 3 m × 2 m garden shed catches enough wind to lift a small car off the ground.
Outdoor furniture: stow inside or strap down. Wooden tables and chairs are heavy enough to ride out a Region A storm but will fly in Region B+. Cushions, umbrellas, and lightweight aluminium furniture should always come inside.
BBQs: disconnect the gas bottle, store the bottle separately, secure the BBQ itself with ratchet straps or stow inside the garage.
Pot plants: the heavy ceramic ones get blown over and break windows. Either stow inside or move them away from glass.
Kids’ play equipment: trampolines and cubby houses are the killers. Dismantle or anchor properly.
Solar hot water units and rooftop air-con condensers: these should be engineered fixings on a Region C/D house — if you’re not sure, get them inspected. Loose units become projectiles.

Out west the wind takes care of anyone who skips outdoor prep — we’ve seen $100,000 claims start with a single unsecured trampoline. My old man taught me a trick worth knowing: walk the yard before every cyclone season and ask “if this item lifted 10 metres in the air, what would it hit?” Anything you can’t answer safely, anchor or stow.

Ratchet straps are the homeowner’s best friend here. A 4-pack of 25 mm × 4 m straps with 800 kg load rating costs $35 from Bunnings or Repco. Use them to lash outdoor furniture to verandah posts, BBQs to the deck, and anything else you can’t bring inside. Worth doing once, worth doing right.

Phase 2: Structural prep — gutters, roof, downpipes, garage door

Mick here. Right, here’s the thing — most homeowners think cyclone damage is dramatic stuff like roofs lifting off. It is sometimes, but more often it’s the slow-burn damage from water getting in through compromised parts of the building envelope. Blocked gutters overflow back into the eaves and saturate the ceiling cavity. Lifted ridge caps let driven rain into the roof space. A garage roller door that wasn’t braced lets wind into the house cavity and the pressure pops the ceiling out from inside.

The pre-season structural checklist:

Clear gutters and downpipes: October at the latest, before the wet season starts. A blocked gutter holds water and debris, and when the storm hits it overflows backwards into the eaves and rots the soffit lining — a $4,000 fix to repair, $0 to prevent. Use a gutter scoop and a ladder rated to AS/NZS 1892, or hire a professional ($180–$280 for a single-storey).
Roof inspection: walk the roof (or look from a ladder if you’re not comfortable on it) and check for lifted ridge caps, missing screws, cracked tiles, and any rust at the flashings. Replace anything that’s not solid before the season starts. A Metroll or Stratco screw is $1; the damage from a single lifted ridge cap can be thousands.
Downpipes: make sure they’re securely fastened to the wall and that they discharge well away from the foundations — minimum 1 metre, ideally into a stormwater pit or rainwater tank. Backsplash against the wall causes long-term moisture damage to the slab.
Garage roller door: the single biggest structural vulnerability in any house. If wind pressurises the inside of the garage, the roof can be lifted from inside. Install a cyclone brace ($120–$220 from Bunnings or B&D Doors) and use it whenever a warning is issued. Stratco and Steel-Line both make engineered bracing kits.
External doors and window frames: check the weather seals for cracking, replace any that don’t compress fully. Driven rain finds every gap.
Eaves and soffit: any missing or damaged sheeting lets wind into the roof cavity and pressure-builds against the ceiling. Replace anything broken.
Fascia and barge boards: the trim around the roof edge takes the brunt of wind. Check for rotted timber and replace as needed.
Trees: any branch overhanging the house gets pruned. Anything within 5 metres of the house that’s mature should be assessed by an arborist — falling trees are the single biggest cause of fatal cyclone damage to homes.

Listen mate, the gutter clean is the one most people skip and it’s the one with the highest cost-of-failure ratio. We’ve pulled $15,000 ceiling repairs out of houses where the homeowner skipped a $0 weekend job. Definately do this every year, in October, no exceptions. Your insurer will ask about it after a claim, and “I cleaned them last spring” is a much better answer than “I think they’re alright.”

The other one homeowners forget is the garage door brace. A standard 5 m residential roller door is rated for maybe 60 km/h wind without bracing — a category 2 cyclone is 130 km/h, which means the door deflects, the wind gets inside the garage, the air pressure spikes, and the roof comes off from inside. Pay the $200 and brace the door before the season.

Phase 3: Electrical safety, surge protection and generator rules

Ash here. Electricity doesn’t care about your weekend plans — and it especially doesn’t care during a cyclone, when the grid is unstable, lines come down, and tens of thousands of homes are running generators that may or may not have been installed correctly. The electrical safety angles to a storm are: surge protection during, generator safety during/after, and never touching downed lines.

Surge protection. Lightning strikes during a storm can induce voltage spikes of several thousand volts on the household wiring even without a direct strike — and that surge travels through the network and into your appliances, cooking the electronics in your TV, fridge, dishwasher, induction cooktop, and computer. There are three layers of surge protection worth running:

Whole-of-house surge protection device (SPD) at the switchboard. Around $400–$700 installed by a licensed sparky. Diverts spikes to earth before they reach the house wiring. Mandatory in some new Region C/D builds, recommended everywhere.
Point-of-use surge protection on sensitive devices. A good powerboard with surge protection (Belkin, APC, Thor) for $40–$80 covers TV, audio, computer setups. The cheap $15 powerboards with “surge protection” on the label are barely better than a plain board — check the joule rating (minimum 1000 J for real protection).
Unplug irreplaceable items during a storm. The only 100% guaranteed surge protection is no connection. If you’ve got a desktop computer with irreplaceable data and you see lightning, pull the plug.

Generator safety. Backup generators kill more people in the week after a major storm than the storm itself, and the cause is almost always the same: carbon monoxide poisoning from running the generator in an enclosed space, or backfeed electrocution where the generator was plugged into a powerpoint. The rules are simple and non-negotiable:

Never run a generator inside a garage, shed, carport, verandah, or any enclosed space. Outdoors, downwind, minimum 5 metres from any window or door. Carbon monoxide is colourless, odourless, and will put a sleeping family of four into permanent unconsciousness in under an hour.
Never backfeed a house by plugging the generator into a powerpoint. When the grid is down, a backfeed energises the local network and kills the linesman repairing your street. Use a proper transfer switch installed by a sparky ($400–$800 for the install, $600+ for the switch hardware).
Use a portable generator with appliances plugged directly into the unit. Heavy-duty extension cords (15 A) from the genny to the fridge, freezer, and a few lights. Don’t try to power the whole house through a powerpoint.
RCD protection on the generator output. Modern portable generators have inbuilt RCDs — check yours before you buy. If it doesn’t, fit an inline RCD between the generator and your appliances.
Fuel storage: petrol in approved jerry cans, stored in a ventilated outdoor location away from ignition sources. Never inside the house. Most homes need 10–20 L of fuel for a 3-day outage on a 3 kVA portable genny.

Downed power lines. After any major storm, treat every fallen line as live until your distributor (Energex, Ergon, Endeavour, Ausgrid, etc) confirms otherwise. Stay 8 metres away. Don’t drive over lines. Don’t move tree branches that are touching lines. Don’t stand in puddles near where a line has fallen — water conducts and the puddle can be energised across a wide area. Recieve confirmation from the distributor before approaching anywhere a line came down. I get this question alot — “but the power’s off in the street, isn’t it safe?” — and the answer is no, fallen lines can be re-energised any moment by automated reclosing on the grid.

Phase 4: Wet-weather sealants, door seals and window glazing

Steve here. Twenty years on the tools and I still see the same pre-storm shortcuts — somebody runs a quick bead of silicone over a leaking window frame the day before a storm hits, the silicone doesn’t cure in the humidity, and the leak runs through worse than before. Pre-storm sealing has to happen weeks ahead, in dry weather, with the right product and the right prep.

The wet-weather sealing checklist:

External window frames: inspect the silicone bead where the frame meets the wall cladding. Any cracked or pulled-away silicone gets cut out and re-beaded with neutral-cure silicone (Selleys Roof & Gutter or Sika Sanisil). Dry weather, 24 hours minimum to cure before the storm.
External door seals: the brush seals at the bottom of external doors wear out in 5–7 years. Replace with a Raven RP3 or similar — $25 each, takes 20 minutes per door. The seal should fully compress against the floor and leave no daylight visible from outside.
Garage door bottom seal: the rubber seal along the bottom of a roller door is the single biggest source of water ingress in a typical garage. Replace every 5 years with a Stratco or B&D replacement — about $40 for a standard 2.4 m door.
Roof flashings: any flashing where the roof meets a wall, a chimney, a vent or a skylight needs inspection annually. Replace the lead or aluminium flashing if it’s pulling away; re-silicone any joints with neutral-cure roof & gutter silicone.
Gutter joints: sealed gutter joins fail every 8–10 years. A bead of Selleys Roof & Gutter silicone over a clean joint restores the seal. Do this in October before the wet hits.
Verandah and pergola roof: any polycarbonate or Colorbond patio roof needs joint inspection — the EPDM washers under the roofing screws perish in 10–15 years and let water through every screw hole. Replace as a batch every decade.
Window glazing putty (older houses): traditional putty around timber-framed windows cracks and falls out over 30+ years. Replace with a polyurethane-based glazing sealant (Sikaflex 11FC) for a flexible, long-lasting seal.

The product choice matters. Neutral-cure silicones (Sika, Selleys Wet Area, Bostik Wetstix) are what you want for any exterior sealing — they don’t release acetic acid during cure, so they don’t corrode metal fixings or stain timber. Acetic-cure silicones (the cheap general-purpose stuff that smells like vinegar) are fine for interior tile work but inappropriate for exterior weatherproofing. Read the label.

One specific pre-storm task — if you’ve got openable windows or sliding doors that haven’t been used in a while, occured to me to mention: cycle them through their full travel once in dry weather to make sure the seals haven’t perished and the locks engage fully. The first time you discover a sliding door won’t latch is not when the wind starts pushing on it.

Phase 5: The post-storm checklist

The 48 hours after a major storm or cyclone are statistically more dangerous than the storm itself — falls from inspecting damaged roofs, electrocution from downed lines, generator carbon monoxide, and unstable trees coming down in aftershock winds. Work the checklist methodically, in order.

First 30 minutes after the all-clear:

Check on everyone in the household. Account for pets.
Stay inside if you can hear sirens or alarms — emergency services may still be responding.
If you smell gas, evacuate and call your gas distributor — don’t operate any electrical switches.
If you smell burning, evacuate and call 000.

First few hours:

Walk the perimeter of the property from a safe distance. Look for downed power lines, fallen trees, structural damage.
Stay 8 metres from any fallen line. Call your electrical distributor — don’t approach.
Photograph all damage before you touch anything — insurance loss assessors need before-cleanup photos.
Tarp any breached roof if it’s safe to do so from inside the ceiling cavity — never on the roof until it’s been declared safe.
Move any soaked belongings to a dry area to start drying them out.

First 48 hours:

Lodge insurance claims with photos. Most insurers have a 30-day window for storm claims but earlier is better.
Get a structural inspection if you’ve got any visible roof damage, cracked walls, or sagging ceilings.
Get an electrical inspection before turning power back on if water has entered the switchboard or any internal walls.
Run dehumidifiers and fans on any wet areas to prevent mould — 48 hours is the window before mould establishes.
Check the gutters for new blockages from debris.
Check the roof from inside the ceiling cavity for new leaks.

First week:

Schedule any tree work with an arborist — trees that survived but are now leaning or stressed are likely to come down in the next storm.
Document all repairs and keep receipts for insurance.
Replace any consumed supplies — batteries, candles, fresh water, fuel.
Review what worked and what didn’t in your prep, and write notes for next season.

The team’s verdict

The single biggest pattern we see in storm damage claims is preventable damage from outdoor items, blocked gutters, and unbraced garage doors. None of those are expensive or complicated to fix — they just require the homeowner to do the boring jobs in October before the season starts. The teams who handle Australia’s storm response every year see the same houses claiming the same losses year after year, and it’s almost always the same root causes.

If you take three things from this guide: one, walk the yard every October and ask “what would this item hit if it lifted 10 metres?” — and anchor or stow accordingly. Two, clear the gutters, brace the garage door, and inspect the roof before the wet season starts. Three, generator outside and downwind, never backfeed a powerpoint, stay 8 metres from any fallen line. Get those three locked in and your claim risk drops by 80%.

Worth doing once, worth doing right. The work takes a weekend a year and saves a fortune across a decade.

FAQs

How do I know my house is built to cyclone standard? Houses built after 1985 in Region C/D should have engineered cyclone tie-downs. Look at your house plans (from council records or your conveyancing file) for references to AS 1170.2 wind region and the wind classification (N1–N6 or C1–C4). Pre-1985 houses often need an engineer’s inspection.

What’s the most overlooked storm prep item? The garage roller door brace. A standard residential door fails at relatively low wind speeds and the resulting pressure inside the garage can lift the roof from inside. $120–$220 fix.

Do I need a generator? If you’re in Region C/D and the area has a history of multi-day outages after cyclones, yes — a 3 kVA portable petrol generator ($600–$1,200) will run a fridge, freezer, a few lights, and charge phones. Region A/B with city power generally doesn’t need one.

How long after a storm should I wait before going on the roof? 24 hours minimum, with surfaces dry, and only if you’ve inspected from a ladder first for obvious damage. Wet metal roofing is dangerously slippery and most storm-related fall injuries happen in the first day after.

Will my insurance cover damage from a tree on my property falling on my neighbour’s house? Generally yes — if the tree falls in a storm event, it’s typically covered by your insurance regardless of where it lands. If the tree was diseased and you knew about it, you may be liable instead. Document any pre-existing concerns about trees with an arborist’s report.

What about flood damage? Flood is a separate insurance category and isn’t included in standard storm cover — check your PDS. Riverine flood and storm surge cover both require specific add-on policies, and in some flood-prone areas the premium is steep.

Got a storm-prep question we should write up? Tell us.