Severe storms and above-average rainfall triggered flash flooding, heavy winds, and hail across large parts of Australia’s East Coast this past week.
Queensland, Victoria, and New South Wales all suffered. One town in Queensland, Maryborough, saw flood levels peaking at 10 metres on Sunday night after 650mm of rain was recorded in the Wide Bay region on Friday.
Insurer Suncorp has pointed out that it is on hand to help impacted policyholders. As the Principal Community Partner of the Queensland State Emergency Service (SES), the insurer has supported Queensland SES volunteers as they responded to the Maryborough community.
“We are working as safely and as quickly as we can to provide support for our customers and communities and our customer support team is on standby for deployment or to support virtually,” said Cath Stewart, head of disaster response & event claims.
The insurer has also set up a new Event Control Centre, which has elevated its disaster readiness and its ability to proactively support customers.
“Through the Event Control Centre, our teams have access to weather mapping, which is overlayed with customer policies across multiple levels of mapping, including aerial images of homes and businesses down to street level,” Stewart commented.
“This technology allows us to identify customers who are potentially impacted by weather events and understand key details about their cover. For the Maryborough floods, we’ve used this data to proactively reach out to those customers and to allocate specific builders and hydrologists to optimise our assessing and claims management strategies.
“As severe weather continues to sweep the East Coast, we will be making welfare calls to customers in impacted areas and urging customers and communities to stay up to date with the latest weather warnings. We will monitor the situation closely and respond as needed.”
