Homeowners and home buyers may be unaware of their exposure to natural disasters, experts warn, if they haven’t taken the time to assess if their home could be in the path of fires, floods and other hazards now and as climate changes further.
The warning comes after the Los Angeles fires, which have taken at least 25 lives and devastated thousands of homes. Climate change is thought to have contributed to the disaster, by way of increasing the region’s fuel load with both unusually wet and dry seasons.
Concerned homeowners or buyers can check exposure to natural disasters through private companies such as Climate Valuation, the Climate Council website maps that show the percentage of properties in each suburb at risk of natural disasters, or by contacting councils to request fire and flood maps or other material they have available.
As the climate changes, Australia will become more exposed to frequent and intense natural disasters such as fires, floods, cyclones, storms, extreme heat and coastal inundation.
Climate Valuation chief executive Karl Mallon said the checks should become a routine part of buying a home. “It’s a good way to put people’s mind at ease when they’re buying something so they don’t get a rude shock,” he said.
Mallon’s company offered a free risk assessment which showed current and future risk to a home, and whether it would lead to an increase in insurance costs.
“These are essentially data and analytics that have been made available to the insurers, we’re trying to make that available to the general public,” he said. “Anyone can go on there and get a free report.
“It will say: these are the things that are at risk in your property. It will tell you these are the things that would be vulnerable to these particular hazards. It will tell you how much the risk is worth on an annual basis, these are the hazards that you need to worry about and these are the parts of the building that are at risk.”
A high risk of natural disasters can lead to unaffordable insurance costs, uninsurability and difficulties getting a mortgage alongside risks to the health and well-being of occupants.
Natural Hazards Research Australia chief executive Andrew Gissing said councils could be a good source of information about risk of disasters.
“I’d send them to their local council,” he said. “A lot of local councils these days have good information available on their websites, but you can also get in contact with councils to get a property hazards certificate for your property.
“That property certificate will have information about whether their property is subject to any overlays.”
University of Tasmania Climate Futures Group Associate Professor Sarah Boulter said it was becoming easier to assess the natural disaster risk to a home but it required leg-work.
“The data is a little bit patchy. It depends on different councils and state governments,” she said. “It was a bit taboo there for a bit but lots of councils have been publishing sea level rises and flood risk maps now.
“Some of them are a bit hard to find so you have to be persistent in digging into the websites looking for information.”
The price to insure a property — if insurance is available — can be another clue. “Just get some online quotes about what the price of a property might be to insure,” Gissing said. “Before buying a property, it’s really important to understand the risk.
“In some high-risk areas, insurance can be tens of thousands of dollars.”
Gissing said it could also help to take a look around the neighbourhood to get an idea of any potential risk, too.
“If you’re backing onto the bush or very close there’s a chance you have a bushfire risk, you have to do something about,” he said. “In terms of things like flooding in particular, it’s a good idea to have a chat with some long-term neighbours.”
Boutler agreed. “Another thing can be having a look at what’s happened in the past. Has a place been flooded before or affected by a fire?”
However, past experiences might not always give the full picture, she warned.
“If you think about Lismore’s [2022 flood], people were talking about a 10-metre flood risk and then the flood came through at 14 metres, so that can be a little hard to plan for.”