Storm Damage & Emergency Tree Callouts Across the Shoalhaven

First hour: make it safe, then make it tidy

After the August 2024 windstorm — 95km/h gusts recorded at Nowra, 80km/h at Ulladulla — Shoalhaven SES units fielded roughly 260 calls for help across a few days, the bulk of them fallen trees blocking roads, driveways and paths, some of them across power lines (South Coast Register). From the Shoalhaven River flats at Bomaderry to the bay frontage at Vincentia and the ridges above Ulladulla Harbour, the aftermath is always the same: people walk out at first light and start pulling at branches.

Do not. Work through this order instead.

1. Power lines. Stay 8 metres clear of any fallen wire or any tree touching a wire, keep kids and pets inside, and call Endeavour Energy on 131 003. Assume every line is live.
2. People. Anyone trapped or injured — 000.
3. Structure at risk. Tree through the roof, water coming in, unsafe building — NSW SES on 132 500.
4. The tree itself. Once the scene is safe, call (02) 4400 9336. Removing, sectioning and clearing the tree is a tree crew's job, not the SES's.

What a storm callout actually involves

A fallen tree is not the same job as a standing one. It is under load — trunk and limbs pinned, bent and storing energy, often across a fence, a car or a roof sheet that will move the moment tension is released. The crews we connect you with work it in stages:

• Assess the load path. Which limbs are bearing weight, what happens when each one is cut, and what is underneath.
• Make safe. Remove the immediate hazard — the limb over the front door, the hung-up branch above the footpath, the section pressing on a gutter — before anything cosmetic.
• Rig and section. Where the tree is on a structure, sections are roped and lowered rather than dropped, so the damage does not get worse during the removal.
• Clear and clean. Cut-up, chipping on site, and green waste taken away. See mulching & green waste removal.
• Document. Photos and an itemised invoice, because your insurer will want both.

Why South Coast trees fail the way they do

Wind alone rarely does it. Wind plus saturated ground does. After days of rain in an east coast low, the soil around a root plate loses its grip, and a tall tree with an unreduced crown becomes a lever.

• Spotted gum and blackbutt carry a heavy crown high on a straight stem. Great in a forest stand where neighbours break the wind; poor on a cleared suburban block on the Bomaderry ridgeline or a newly opened lot at Worrigee.
• Bangalay near the shoreline copes with salt but sheds brittle limbs.
• Coast banksia and old man banksia in the dune sand around Culburra Beach and Callala Bay have shallow anchorage — they tip rather than snap.
• Cabbage tree palms drop frond and seed loads that dent cars and crack tiles. See palm removal.
• Existing deadwood is the number one projectile. It was there before the storm, and it is the cheapest thing in the world to have taken out beforehand.

Emergency work and council approval

Shoalhaven City Council regulates tree removal on private land through Chapter G4 of the Shoalhaven DCP 2014, and an already-fallen tree is a very different case from a standing one. The Gordon Timbs 45 Degree Rule exemption covers trees within 45 degrees of a lawfully approved building that pose a risk — reinstated in its pre-August-2023 form by Amendment No. 57, adopted 11 March 2025 (Get Involved Shoalhaven).

Be careful, though: "there was a storm last week" is not a blanket exemption for every tree on your block. A crew that clears a fallen tree and then also takes out the two standing ones next to it can put you in breach. Straight advice — make safe first, then check the standing trees with Council on 1300 293 111 before they come down.

After the storm, before the next one

Most of the trees that come down in a Shoalhaven blow were showing it beforehand: deadwood in the crown, a lean that got worse, fungal brackets at the base, or a crown so dense the wind could not pass through it. Once the mess is gone, the sensible next step is tree pruning to deadwood the survivors, tree lopping to reduce wind sail on the tall ones, and tree removal for anything genuinely compromised. Stumps left behind can be dealt with by stump grinding.

Coverage runs from Berry to Ulladulla — see areas we cover, or head back to home.

Tree down now? Call (02) 4400 9336 and say what it landed on — that determines your place in the queue.