Flood Restoration near you

Electricity is the first hazard and the least visible. The Better Health Channel's advice is that gas or electricity supplies on your property may be damaged and these hazards need to be confirmed safe by a qualified electrician or plumber before you rely on them. That applies to the switchboard, to power points that went under, and to anything that was plugged in at the time.

Rooftop solar adds a hazard that is particular to Australian housing and catches people out. The NSW Government's clean-up advice states flatly that solar panels produce electricity even when power has been cut and the panels turned off at the switchboard. A flood-damaged solar array is live during daylight regardless of what the main switch is doing, and it needs an electrician rather than an assumption.

Take photographs before you move anything. The NSW Government's advice to property owners is to take photos and document any damage, and it is worth doing systematically — every room, every wall at water height, every appliance and every piece of contents — because the restoration will destroy the evidence of its own necessity within days.

Flood-damaged Australian houses built before the 1990s are an asbestos problem as well as a water problem. The NSW Government describes where it turns up: flat or corrugated sheets, known as fibro, used for walls, ceilings and roofing, and also in pipes, electrical conduit, eaves or the backing under vinyl flooring. Water-soaked and broken fibro is exactly the material that ends up in a flood clean-up pile.

The NSW advice for handling it where professional removal is not possible is specific: wear gloves and a P2 mask, not an ordinary paper mask or bandanna, and pick up rather than sweep the pieces of asbestos. Sweeping and any form of blowing or dry cleaning are what make fibres airborne. Anything beyond picking up broken pieces belongs to a licensed removalist, and the licensing rules are set by each state's work health and safety regulator.

For the ordinary contaminated-water work, the Better Health Channel recommends rubber gloves and boots and eye protection when cleaning areas that may have been in contact with sewage, and says surfaces should be cleaned and disinfected with hot water and detergent. Treat every surface the water touched as contaminated regardless of how it looks once it has dried.

The standard definition draws a line around water that has escaped from the normal confines of a lake, river, creek or other natural watercourse, or from a reservoir, canal or dam. Rain falling on your roof and overwhelming the gutters is not flood. Water running down a street and into a garage is not flood either, though it may be covered under storm or rainwater runoff, which the Insurance Council notes most insurers treat as part of storm cover.

This matters because the two are often present in the same event, and because how flood cover is provided varies from insurer to insurer — the Council describes it as offered as a standard inclusion, an opt-out, an opt-in, or not included. Two houses in the same street with the same water through them can have entirely different answers.

The practical step is to read the definitions in your own product disclosure statement before you need them, and, when you do need them, to describe to the insurer where the water came from rather than what it did. Where the water entered from is the question the assessment turns on.