Flood recovery checklist for Queensland businesses.

After a flood the order is: make the site safe, document the loss before you clean, notify your insurer, and get one working channel back to customers within 48 hours. Businesses that clean up first and photograph second routinely lose thousands off their claim.

Before you touch anything

• Do not enter until power is isolated and the building has been checked. Floodwater and switchboards kill people every wet season.
• Photograph and video everything: wide shots, close-ups, serial numbers and water lines on the wall.
• Record the date and time of entry and who was present.
• Keep damaged stock and equipment until the assessor has seen it, or has agreed in writing that you can dispose of it.

What your insurer will ask for

• Evidence of the water height and how it entered the premises.
• Stock records and recent purchase invoices.
• Trading figures for the equivalent period last year, for a business interruption claim.
• Receipts for every mitigation cost: pumps, driers, skips and emergency labour.
• A log of when you closed, what you did and when you resumed partial trade.

Getting back to customers in 48 hours

You do not need the shop back. You need one channel that works: a pinned post, a recorded phone message or an SMS to your regulars. Say what happened, what you can still do and when you will next update. Businesses that go quiet for a week lose customers they never get back, regardless of the damage.

Then fix the one thing

Every flood teaches a business something it already half knew. The stock was on the floor, the server was in the back room, nobody could reach the landlord. Before the season closes, fix that one thing and write down who lifts what, in what order, next time.

Worked example: a Lismore-border retailer's 2022-style event

A homewares retailer on the Gold Coast hinterland, in a catchment prone to flash flooding, faced a rapid rise event that put 40cm of water through the ground floor overnight. Because the manager had a lift list from a prior near-miss, the highest-value stock and the EFTPOS terminal had already been moved to a mezzanine level before the water arrived, saving an estimated $60,000 in stock. What they had not prepared for was the assessor's request for pre-loss stock records; because their point-of-sale system was cloud-based and unaffected by the flood, they were able to produce twelve months of sales data within a day, which the insurer's assessor later noted was unusually fast and helped settle the claim within six weeks rather than the three to four months typical for comparable claims in the same event.

Common mistakes that cost money

• Cleaning up before photographing. Once stock is binned or the floor is scrubbed, the physical evidence for the claim is gone.
• Re-entering the building before it has been checked for electrical safety, which is a leading cause of injury and death in flood recovery.
• Going silent on customer communication for days while dealing with the physical cleanup, which loses trade that has nothing to do with the flood itself.
• Storing trading and stock records only on-site, where they are destroyed along with everything else.
• Not logging mitigation costs like pump hire and emergency cleaning labour, which are often reimbursable but only with receipts.

What good recovery looks like

A well-recovered business has cloud-based trading records that survive the flood untouched, a pre-agreed lift list that moved the highest-value stock before the water arrived, a phone or social channel back up within 48 hours, and a claim lodged with photographic evidence from before any cleanup began.

How soon after a flood should I contact my insurer?

As soon as it is safe to do so, ideally within 24 to 48 hours, even before you have a full picture of the damage. Most policies require prompt notification, and an early call also gets an assessor into the queue sooner during what is usually a high-volume period across the region.

Can I clean up before the insurance assessor arrives?

You can and often should begin safe mitigation work, such as removing standing water and starting drying, since delay can worsen mould damage which some policies treat differently. The key is to photograph and document everything thoroughly before you clean, dispose of, or repair anything, and to keep damaged items until the assessor has either inspected them or given written agreement to dispose of them.

See also floods are part of running a Queensland business, our guide to business interruption insurance in Queensland, and our cyclone season checklist for the preparation side of this.