Almost 40% of homes and commercial buildings impacted by the South East Queensland floods are no longer showing signs of damage, Queensland’s Deputy Premier has announced.
Deputy Premier and Minister for State Development, Infrastructure, Local Government and Planning and Minister Assisting the Premier on Olympics Infrastructure, Steven Miles said the Queensland Government had completed its largest reconstruction monitoring assessment since the 2011 floods, checking on almost 8,600 homes and businesses impacted by the severe rainfall and flooding earlier in the year.
Mr Miles said assessments were conducted across 19 flood-impacted local government areas over a four-week period in June/July.
“These three-month assessments were a follow-up to the initial damage assessments conducted by officers from the Queensland Fire and Emergency Service and QRA straight after the flooding,” Mr Miles said.
“Of the almost 8,600 assessments undertaken on homes and commercial buildings almost 3400, or 40 per cent, are no longer showing signs of damage.
“However, there are still many properties where work is still needed with more than 1,300 assessed as still having severe levels of damage, more than 1,900 with moderate damage and more than 1,900 with minor levels of damage.”
The Deputy Premier said more than 4,200 people had registered their interest for the State Government’s flagship Resilient Homes Fund.
“Through the Resilient Homes Fund, eligible Queenslanders will receive funding to repair and retrofit their house, raise their house or in some circumstances have their property purchased under a voluntary buy-back program,” he said.
“As of 26 July, there have been more than 4,200 registrations of interest in the program. This includes 437 people registering their interest in the voluntary buy-back scheme, 1,252 in the house-raising and 1,491 in the retrofit, with 664 people unsure which option is best suited to their individual needs.
“This is a difficult time for a lot of people, and we know it will be some time before everyone is back in their homes and recovered from these events.
“While these visits provide a status update on recovery efforts, they also give us the opportunity to check on impacted residents and, where required, arrange further support.”
QRA CEO, Brendan Moon said the three-month follow-up operation showed encouraging signs of recovery but there was still a lot of work to do.
“Of the 5,190 properties that are still assessed as damaged, repairs had started on more than 1,600 properties, or almost one-third,” said Mr Moon.
“While many properties had been treated for mould and prepared for further works, a number of residents said they are experiencing delays in completing repairs due to the high demand for tradespeople, equipment and building supplies.
“This was a major operation with officers going street-by-street, house-by-house and business-by-business, inspecting the properties that had previously reported as damaged.
“When residents and owners were home, officers checked in on a range of issues, including flooding impacts, status of repair works and insurance coverage, to determine the current extent of the damage and any recovery that had occurred so far.”
He said the information collected during the assessment would be shared with state agencies, impacted councils and other stakeholders to inform the ongoing recovery efforts.
“During the assessments residents were also given information on the $741 million Resilient Homes Fund – which is being delivered through the jointly funded Commonwealth-State Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements (DRFA) – and encouraged to register their interest if they hadn’t already.”
“Recovery from any significant natural disaster is a collaborative effort and we would like to thank the staff from QFES, the National Recovery and Resilience Agency (NRRA) and Disaster Relief Australia (DRA) and local councils who assisted in the operation,” said Mr Moon.
Future damage assessments of impacted properties will be conducted six, nine and 12 months after the flooding event, he said.
