<
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/20/the-never-ending-fallout-of-the-lismore-floods-people-are-just-worn-down>
"In February the hills and valleys of the New South Wales northern rivers are
green and lush and fertile in the late summer sun. There is brightness in the
madly proliferating tropical flora, radiance in the golden hour of the evening.
In the towns the mud has gone, mostly, and the smell too has faded; a semblance
of normality returned to the main streets. As the foliage has returned, the
devastation of the 2022 floods is more hidden now; the scale of what happened.
The people who are changed.
As the anniversary of the disaster approaches, along with the cyclone season,
for those left in the flood’s wake the impact is still unfolding. When the
flood waters receded a year ago, for many, the disaster was only beginning.
“You could hazard a guess that something like 15 to 20,000 people were
impacted,” says Professor James Bennett Levy from the University of Sydney
Centre for Rural Health. “I would say there’s been huge collective trauma as
well as individual trauma.”
“If I am doing a community event,” says Naomi Vaotuua, recovery and resilience
officer for the Red Cross, “I will literally have grown men crying in my arms
because it’s a cloudy day and they thought they were doing alright but they
have been triggered.”
Kerry Pritchard, coordinator of recovery Hub 2484 in Murwillumbah, says: “I
guess what is surfacing now is more residual complex trauma. We feel like we
are still very much in the middle of it, at the coalface of supporting people.
That is both in terms of rebuilding in a physical sense and also healing from
that traumatic event.”
The northern rivers floods were Australia’s biggest natural disaster since
Cyclone Tracy in 1974. It was the second-costliest event in the world for
insurers in 2022, and the most expensive disaster in Australian history. Many
residents had found premiums unaffordable and had no insurance at all.
The Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation (NRRC), funded by the federal
and NSW governments, is currently assessing over 6,000 flood-impacted
residences for buyback, raising or retrofit."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
