Storm-damaged shed in Dubbo: the first hour.
Do these in order. Move people, vehicles and stock away from the downwind side and keep them there. Switch the shed circuit off at the house switchboard, not at the shed. If a cable is down, damaged or arcing, call Triple Zero and your network operator and stay at least eight metres clear of it and of anything touching it. Do not climb up, and do not pull at a hanging sheet: a partly fixed sheet moving in a gust will take a hand off. Photograph everything from the ground before you move a thing, wide shots first. Then tarp and strap only what you can reach standing on the ground.
What makes the damage worse in the next twenty minutes.
Most of the extra damage we see after a Dubbo storm happens after the storm, not during it. A shed that has lost two sheets has not finished failing. It is now a building with a hole in its skin, and the next cell, which around here often arrives within the hour, gets inside and pressurises it. That is the same physics that lifts the roof off an open-front hay shed: wind pushing up on the underside of the roof at the same moment the airflow outside is sucking it up. So the most useful thing you can do is close the hole if you can do it safely from the ground, and if you cannot, get everything valuable out from under it instead.
Move the machinery first. A tractor, a header, a boat or a caravan under a compromised roof is the most expensive thing in that shed and the easiest thing to save. Do it before you start photographing the roof, and photograph the machinery where it now stands so nobody later argues about when the damage to it happened.
Leave the debris where it is. Sheeting, purlins, torn flashings, the screws lying in the dirt: all of it is evidence. Assessors look at fixings first, because loose or corroded screws are the argument an insurer uses to call a storm claim gradual deterioration. Clean it up before the assessor sees it and you have thrown away your own proof. Move it only if it is a hazard, and photograph it where it lies before you do.
If it is dark, raining or still blowing, stop. There is nothing on a shed worth doing in those conditions. Rope the area off, park a vehicle across the approach so nobody wanders in, and start again in daylight.
What you are looking at, how urgent it is, what it costs.
Work down this table with your phone in your hand. The costs are 2026 guide figures for the Dubbo and Orana region, supplied and fitted, and they assume reasonable vehicle access to the shed.
| What you can see | What it usually means | How urgent | Typical cost to put right |
|---|---|---|---|
| A roof sheet lifted at one end and flapping | Screws have pulled through at the windward eave or at the ridge. The sheets either side are now carrying load they were never meant to carry. | Now | Make-safe $450 to $1,200. Replace sheets and re-fix $1,500 to $6,000. |
| A run of roof gone, purlins bent or twisted | The fixing line or the purlin itself has failed. The frame underneath has usually taken a hit even when it looks straight from the ground. | Now | Re-roof a double garage $8,000 to $18,000. Rebuild a 3 to 4 bay machinery shed $40,000 to $90,000 plus slab. |
| A wall sheet gone and the frame leaning out of square | Bracing has failed, a base plate has drawn, or a footing has lifted. This shed can fold sideways in the next gust. | Now | Reinstate bracing $2,500 to $8,000. Replace racked portals $15,000 to $40,000. |
| The cable to the shed is pulled tight, cut or arcing | A live electrical hazard. Sub-mains to a farm shed out here are often direct buried or slung on catenary wire that a falling sheet catches. | Now | Licensed electrician isolation $200 to $600 in hours. Reinstate the sub-mains $1,500 to $6,000. |
| Broken grey fibrous cement sheeting on an older shed | Pre-1990 sheds around the Orana are often asbestos cement. Do not sweep it, do not hose it and do not add it to the farm tip pile. | Now, isolate | Licensed non-friable removal $60 to $120 per square metre, minimum job $1,500 to $3,000. |
| Water pouring in at the ridge or a barge | A flashing has lifted or its fixings have gone. Cheap to fix, expensive to ignore once it soaks fodder, fertiliser or a switchboard. | This week | Replace ridge and barge flashings $1,500 to $5,000. |
| Roller door buckled or off its track, will not close | Door damage, usually not structural. The real problem is that the shed is now open and unsecured. | This week | Secure or re-track $400 to $1,200. New domestic roller door $1,400 to $3,200. |
| Gutter torn off, downpipe hanging | Bracket failure. Roof water now discharges straight at the footing, which is the worst possible place for it on reactive clay. | This week | Refit or replace gutter and downpipes $600 to $2,500. |
| A tree limb resting on the roof | A point load on a sheet that may now be the only thing holding the roof down. Along the Macquarie the culprit is usually a river red gum. | This week, unless the roofline is sagging | Removal $600 to $2,500, plus whatever it broke. |
| The shed is on a lean but everything is still attached | Usually footing movement on cracking clay rather than storm damage. The storm just made you look at it properly. | This week, get it inspected | Underpin or re-foot $8,000 to $25,000 and up. |
| Hail dents in the sheets, no holes | Cosmetic in most cases, though the coating can be broken at the crown of a dent, and that is where rust starts years later. | Can wait, photograph now | Nothing now. A re-roof later is $8,000 to $18,000 on a garage. |
| Sheets rattling, screws loose when you check them | The washers have perished under western NSW UV and the storm found them. This is what causes the next failure, not this one. | Weeks, not years | Re-screw a garage roof $1,200 to $3,500. A large farm-shed roof $4,000 to $12,000. |
Guide figures for the Dubbo and Orana region in 2026. Access, height and how much of the frame is involved move them. Compare against the full shed pricing guide and the warning signs page.
What you can do yourself, and what genuinely hurts people.
Reasonable owner jobs.
- Isolating the shed circuit at the house switchboard and leaving it off.
- Driving machinery, vehicles and the caravan out from under a compromised roof.
- Photographing from the ground: wide shots first, then each area of damage, then close-ups of the fixings and the torn edges. Photograph the sheet profile and the roof colour as well, because matching a discontinued colour becomes a real problem later.
- Tarping and strapping anything you can reach with both feet on the ground, using ratchet straps over the top rather than nails or screws punched through the sheeting.
- Bagging and labelling small parts, pulled screws and torn washers.
- Lodging the claim with your insurer and asking whether they want to arrange the make-safe themselves.
Jobs that are genuinely dangerous.
- Going up on a roof that has already lost fixings. You cannot tell from below which sheets are still held down.
- Grabbing, cutting free or dragging a hanging sheet. Steel sheeting with a torn edge, moving in wind, is a blade.
- Working anywhere near a leaning or racked frame. A shed that has lost its bracing is being held up by habit.
- Touching anything near a damaged cable, including a fence, a gutter or a downpipe the cable may be resting on.
- Breaking, drilling, sweeping or hosing suspected asbestos cement sheeting.
- Propping a sagging roof with a post and then standing under it. Temporary propping is engineering, not carpentry.
None of this is us being precious. Sheeting injuries and roof falls are the two things that actually hurt people after a storm, and they happen to competent, capable owners who have done a hundred jobs on that shed before.
Need it looked at and written up properly?
Send us the photos and the address. We will tell you what is structural, what is cosmetic and what an insurer will need to see, then quote the repair in writing.
After hours versus Monday morning: the real difference.
An after-hours or weekend make-safe in the Dubbo region is not a different job, it is the same job with a premium on it. Expect a call-out fee somewhere around $250 to $450 before anyone touches anything, then an hourly rate loaded by roughly 50 to 100 per cent, and travel charged from town out to your block. In practice the make-safe that costs $450 to $1,200 on a Tuesday morning lands at $700 to $2,000 on a Saturday night. If an elevating work platform has to come out to reach a hanging sheet, add $600 to $1,400 for the day, and after hours it is harder to get one at all.
So the honest arithmetic is this. Paying the premium is worth it when the shed is still losing material, when water is running into stored fodder, fertiliser or a switchboard, when the building is unsafe and cannot be fenced off from people or stock, or when the contents under that roof are worth far more than the call-out. It is not worth it when the damage has stopped, the weather has passed, and the only thing an after-hours crew would do is put on a tarp you could have thrown a strap over yourself.
One more thing worth knowing about widespread storms. When a severe thunderstorm line crosses the Central West and hits Dubbo, Narromine and Wellington in the same afternoon, every roofer and shed crew in the region is booked out by the following morning and sheeting supply gets tight. The people who ring first are the people who get a make-safe first. Lodging your claim and getting your name on a list on day one costs nothing, and it is worth more than the after-hours premium.
When it is not an emergency, and what we do not do.
Most of the calls we get the morning after a storm are not emergencies, and we say so. Hail dents without perforation, a torn gutter, a buckled roller door on an empty shed, a bit of flashing lifted at one end: none of that gets worse in three days. Photograph it, tarp it if water is getting in, and book a normal weekday visit. Calling that out after hours adds roughly $400 to $900 to the bill and buys you nothing. If you want a simple test, ask whether anything is still moving, still getting wet, or still dangerous. If the answer is no to all three, it can wait for a working day.
There is also a case where the cheapest right answer is to do nothing structural at all. An old shed with widespread rusted purlins and a peeled roof is often not worth repairing, because a repair on a corroded frame cannot honestly be certified and you spend $15,000 to $40,000 chasing a building whose replacement is $40,000 to $90,000. In that situation we will tell you to tarp it, take the insurance conversation seriously, and talk about a new build rather than a repair.
What a shed builder will not do: they are not electricians and will not touch your sub-mains, they do not remove asbestos, and they do not run your insurance claim for you. Most are not a twenty-four-hour crew either, and none should put anyone on a roof in the dark or in wind. A good one comes out in daylight, makes the structure safe, writes a scope and a fixed quote an assessor can actually work from, and does the repair or the rebuild to the standard the engineering actually requires rather than the standard that gets it off the job sheet.
Storm emergency questions.
What should I do first when a storm damages my shed in Dubbo?
What does an emergency make-safe on a shed cost in the Dubbo region?
Is it safe to climb onto a damaged shed roof myself?
When is shed storm damage not an emergency?
Will an emergency make-safe hurt my insurance claim?
How quickly can a shed be repaired after a Dubbo storm?
Send us the storm photos and we will tell you what it takes to fix
We come out, make the structure safe and send a written repair or rebuild quote an assessor can work from, usually within a couple of days of the visit.
Shed damaged and not sure how bad it is?
Free on-site assessment across Dubbo, Wellington, Narromine, Gilgandra, Geurie and Wongarbon. Fixed written quote, engineered repairs, no pressure.