Thousands of people in Western Australia (WA) continue to face insurance-related problems four months after the devastation of Tropical Cyclone Seroja.
In April, Tropical Cyclone Seroja arrived at the coastal town of Kalbarri and Northampton, severely damaging homes, businesses, telecommunications, road infrastructure, and electricity service across several WA communities.
Now, a few months after the cyclone hit, and many residents in WA are still waiting to settle their insurance claims. Some are living in houses with tarpaulin roofs as they wait for information about their claims, and many people are still waiting for tradespeople to restore their homes.
Rod O'Bree, for example, shared with ABC that his Yanget homestead lost some portions of its roof tilling in the cyclone. While waiting for the restoration of his roof, he is using temporary make-safe measures of tarps and sandbags, unfortunately allowing more water to get into his homestead.
“It's getting through in a few spots, the drips. We've got a few buckets in the roof now,” O'Bree said, as reported by ABC. “We are catching a fair bit of it, but the latest bit with the winds we got last weekend has destroyed the sandbags and the tarps.
“It's a bit mouldy in one of the bathrooms, the paint is starting to flake off, and there's a bit of an electrical surge going through the showerhead, but we just don't use that for the time being.”
Mullewa farmer Rod Messina, who estimated that the damage bill to his farm would most likely be around $1 million, said he continues to wait for the result of his insurance claim – leaving him frustrated.
“It's been very hard to try and focus the planning on rebuilding just yet because we don't know how much, financially, we're going to be out of pocket,” Messina said, as reported by ABC.
Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) chief executive officer Andrew Hall explained that delays in repairs were due to various factors, including COVID-19 border closures, a shortage of skilled labour, and an influx of claims from across the country.
“It has had a double impact in that it's been a highly destructive event in relatively remote locations, which has made it quite challenging for insurers to get on to repairs,” he said, as reported by ABC. “We are very worried about the communities around the area that were impacted by Cyclone Seroja.”
Hall confirmed that the ICA will have one-on-one consultations with people in the cyclone's impact zone who need assistance with their claims.
“We've got specialised teams [that] travel the country doing this. Unfortunately, the West Australian border restrictions have prevented us from doing [that] this time,” he said. “We're really worried that moving into the coming summer season, when we see these events occur more frequently, that we will slip further behind.”
Hall urged people affected by the cyclone to register for a consultation via the ICA website.
