What Should I Do If Roof Tiles Blow Off?

The First Ten Minutes

Before anything else, look up from a safe distance. Tiles rarely come off cleanly - more often one falls and two more are left hanging, slid down and resting on whatever is below them.

Anything visibly loose above a door, a path, a drive or a pavement is the priority. Keep people away from underneath it, move the car, use the other door. On a Widnes estate house with a gable to the prevailing wind, the loose ones are usually along the verge or under the ridge.

Then check inside: the loft if you can get to it safely, and the ceilings of the rooms below. If a ceiling is bulging or dripping from one point, keep out of that room and shut the door.

Keep What Came Off

Collect the pieces and put them somewhere safe. This is worth doing for two separate reasons.

First, matching. A great deal of Widnes was roofed in the same twenty-five years with interlocking concrete tiles, and many of those profiles have not been made since the 1980s. A broken tile in your hand is the fastest way to identify the profile and find salvage, and it is far more reliable than a photograph from the ground.

Second, evidence. If there is going to be an insurance conversation, the physical tile plus a photograph of where it landed is more use than either on its own.

It also tells us something diagnostically. A tile broken cleanly in two has usually been struck or stepped on at some point. A tile that is completely undamaged came off because its fixing let go, not because the wind was exceptional.

Count the Gaps

This is the number that matters, more than how big any one gap is.

One gap on an otherwise sound roof is a repair, and the felt underneath will usually hold the fort for a few weeks.

Two or three gaps, particularly in the same area, means something else. A tiled roof is partly self-supporting - the tiles hold each other down - so once one has gone its neighbours have a free edge for the wind to get under. Multiple gaps clustered together usually means either the wind found a run of tired fixings, or the first loss is already propagating.

And several gaps in different places on a roof of a certain age is the pattern that points at the fixings generally rather than at this particular storm. On the Widnes estates, where the roofs are now fifty to seventy years old and only every third or fourth course tends to be nailed, that is worth establishing rather than assuming the gale was to blame.

Getting It Made Safe

The order is: stop it doing more damage, then work out what actually failed. Those are two visits more often than one, and that is not a roofer spinning out the job - it is that a proper diagnosis needs settled weather and daylight, and the water needs stopping now.

A make-safe might be sheeting, temporarily refixing what has moved, or removing something loose that cannot be refixed safely today. It should be described to you as a make-safe rather than sold as the repair.

Emergency call-outs here run 24 hours a day Monday to Friday, with weekend cover from 8:00 to 19:00.

The Two Things Not to Do

Do not go up. Not to look, not to sheet it, not for a better photograph. Roof falls are among the most common causes of serious injury around buildings, and the conditions immediately after a gale - wet surfaces, loose material, more wind coming - are the worst possible ones. There is nothing you can establish up there that is worth it.

Do not accept a knock at the door. After a storm, vans appear in damaged streets and someone offers to fix your roof today, often with pressure to decide on the spot. Nobody who has properly assessed your roof has done so from a passing van. Take a name and a business address, get anything they claim in writing, and then ring a firm you have looked up. If the roof genuinely is dangerous, it will still be dangerous in an hour.