Flood victims’ struggle I
RECENTLY received an email from a reader.
It was heartfelt, detailing the plight of just a couple of the many flood victims who still, nearly six months after the event, are in temporary accommodation.
One resident the writer had spoken with had moved seven times since the February event, and was still unable to get back into her home.
With only 3000 of our population of 190,000 affected, the swift clean-up of the piles of mud-covered or water-affected possessions, while efficient, made it easy for people to assume the catastrophic effect on residents was short-lived.
The walk I take with my pooch around the block each day reveals the reality – homes and units still standing empty, unseen owners and tenants living elsewhere, at an impasse with their insurer, with claims rejected outright, or to-and-fro-ing between experts, engineers, hydrologists with no resolution in sight.
My experience is luckier than many, able to remain living in part of my home, I recently got a phone call to let me know my long-awaited, flood-replacement couch had finally arrived.
‘Oh that’s great, except that I don’t actually have a floor to put it on yet,’ I replied, thinking there might be issues storing it until the new concrete slab was poured.
The response surprised me, ‘don’t worry, so many people are in exactly the same boat.’
The recent Townsville Bulletin story on Facebook that described Idalia as a ghost town drew many comments, many were supportive, but a common thread was that people should have known they were building on a flood plain.
Wow, the humanity.
Would we say that those in damaged homes after being hit by a cyclone should have known they were living in a cyclone region?
The initial outpouring of community support is fading, and although people from some kind of government relief organisation knock on the door every couple of months to ask, ‘how are you going?,’ flood-affected folk need resolutions and answers, which for many, aren’t forthcoming.
Those of us that are in our damaged homes are doing OK, it’s residents who are scattered to the winds and not in their homes to answer the doorknock that need help most.
Aside from the anxiety when it rains, trust me, it’s there; the major issues facing homeowners are financial strain from delays and denials; which cause more financial strain, in what’s become an interminable cycle.
Deferred rates aren’t helping those left with uninhabitable houses and units who are not only paying a mortgage, but also rent.
Advice from restoration companies to strip ‘everything’ out in the immediate aftermath to only find they weren’t covered, has left people homeless, and with no tiles or walls when we now know that with professional sanitising, many could have remained until repairs could be carried out.
With some kitchen companies booked until mid- 2020, going home is a pipe dream.
And the fallout is cumulative, it’s not only the hours spent dealing with the insurance, quote and approval process, the financial and emotional costs borne by victims and their children are fuelling a more silent disaster; stress – the effects of which are yet to be calculated.