The Hunter is no stranger to wild weather, with new statistics reaffirming the battering the region’s homes cop during storm season.
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The data from NRMA Insurance shows the Hunter was the fifth-most affected region in New South Wales in the last financial year, with five per cent of all home insurance claims made in the state.
Of the Hunter region, Upper Hunter towns Scone and Muswellbrook top the list of most storm insurance claims in first and second place respectively.
Newcastle suburbs Charlestown, Merewether and Wallsend were ranked fifth, sixth and ninth, while Cessnock came in at fourth and East Maitland at seventh.
Hunter SES units received 1080 requests for assistance in the 12-month period dating back to October 2016, with 876 of these calls storm related.
The Maitland City Unit dealt with 150 requests for assistance since October 2016, with 120 of these storm related.
It’s a marked drop from their numbers the year prior to that, where they responsed to 637 incidents, of which 379 were related to storms.
However, the Maitland unit was kept busy responding to several out of area incidents, including a freak hailstorm at The Hills in north-west Sydney which caused up to $186 million worth of damage in February.
Hunter SES community engagement officer Alexandra Varley said the majority of storm related jobs the service responded to involved roof damage, much of which is preventable.
With the storm season, running from October to March, set to start lashing the Hunter again, the SES has urged home owners to prepare.
Ms Varley said residents could take simple steps such as cleaning their gutters, trimming overhanging branches and regularly checking their roofs for damage to minimise the impact of storms.
The head of the NSW SES, Commissioner Mark Smethurst, said preparing early could prevent costly and time-consuming damage.
“During the last storm season, NSW SES volunteers responded to over 20,000 storm and flood related calls for assistance, however many of these could have been prevented,” Commissioner Smethurst said.
While the Hunter claimed millions in storm damage insurance over the last year, they’re dwarfed by Northern Sydney, which contributed 39 per cent of storm claims in the whole state.
The top five storm hit regions was rounded out by the Illawarra (second, with seven per cent of the state total), the Northern Beaches (third with seven per cent of state claims), and north-western Sydney, with six per cent of claims.
