In 1995, the worst year on record, 0.7% of global GDP was lost due to natural disasters. The trend of economic losses confirms an increase in the last decades. Often, economic losses are expressed as direct losses, that is to say, physical impacts on capital stock. However, it does not describe the full cost of natural disasters, which is better expressed considering also the indirect and macroeconomic losses. The current study, using as example the most five expensive floods in Australia in 1998, focus on the overall economic cost of a natural disaster, paying special attention to the market effects. The use of a global general equilibrium model (GTAP-EF) help us to show that the economic burden of a natural disaster is not confined to the country or region where the disaster physically occurs.