Slow road to recovery
Red tape delays rebuild at fire-ravaged Wye River
THE Great Ocean Road towns were razed in a matter of hours.
But almost two years on from that devastating Black Christmas Day of fires, there is still much to do to rebuild Wye River and Separation Creek.
A total of 109 homes were destroyed in the raging blaze that emanated from the adjoining national park, with many others significantly damaged.
Just four of those have been completely rebuilt, according to the Colac Otway Shire.
A further seven minor building projects have been finished.
A total of 40 permits to rebuild — making up just over a third of all houses lost — have been issued in the past 23 months. And an additional 15 applications are still to be processed.
All of the planning permit fees — estimated to exceed $150,000 — have been waived by the council to help homeowners.
Instead they will be paid out of a $656,000 state government grant that helped establish the One Stop Shop, but will end on January 1.
But other layers of bureaucracy have slowed, or deterred, the rebuild.
The Bushfire Attack Level assessments — said to improve the ability of a building to withstand a blaze — were highly frustrating, an independent review found earlier this year.
“Many property owners had held off on making decisions on rebuilding until these outcomes had come through, which in the end delayed their rebuild by three to four months for no perceived benefit,” the Nous Group review found.
As a local resident told Nous: “Fighting the fire was the easy bit. We just did it. It’s the post-fire stuff that’s really hard work.”
The council this week revealed the total government contribution to the area’s rebuild program so far was $8.647 million.
A further contribution of $754,184 from the federal-state