Storm Damage: What To Do In The First Hour

Storm damage is frightening, and the instinct to climb up and look is strong. Don't. Kent storms bring gusts that have taken experienced roofers off ladders. Everything below buys you time until someone can get there safely.

If water is coming in

• Move furniture and valuables out from under the leak before anything else
• Put buckets down and towels around them — water tracking along a joist often drips somewhere other than the actual entry point
• Do not pierce a bulging ceiling — if water is pooling behind plasterboard it will come down anyway, and pierced it comes down on you
• Photograph everything as it is, before you move it. Insurers want the scene, not a tidied version

If tiles have come off

Stay away from the area beneath, and keep children and pets clear. Loose tiles and ridge sections can drop hours after the wind has passed. If anything is hanging over a footpath, that's worth calling the council about as well as us.

What we do when we arrive

First job is always to make the property watertight, not to fix it permanently. That usually means sheeting the affected elevation and securing anything loose. Once the weather clears we come back and do the proper repair — and the temporary work is part of the same job, not a separate charge.

Insurance: the bit people get wrong

Most policies cover storm damage and the cost of making the property safe. What they usually will not cover is a roof that was already deteriorating before the storm arrived. Keep dated photographs and any earlier survey or repair paperwork — that record is what separates "storm took these tiles" from "these tiles were already failing".