A long time to heal

Long after a cyclone or a natural disaster the devastation still remains. Yasi’s destruction has been all but forgotten except by those who are still rebuilding their lives. The rest of us move on.

I spoke to a woman recently who said she lived at Mission Beach. ‘How are you doing?’ I asked, thinking she’d be over the worst of it by now.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘We’ve just moved for the fourth time and we’re in a demountable now so that’s better.’

‘Demountable?’

‘Yeah, we’re been in tents, then caravans so this is good.’

‘And your house?’

‘It’s trashed. Insurance will never cover the full cost of rebuilding’ She shrugged. ‘We’ll probably have to sell the land. We don’t have money to rebuild and we still owe the bank.’

This morning when I went for a walk on the beach a large chunk of pontoon had washed up on Trinity. It’s an ugly reminder that while we’ve all got on with our lives the immense damage to property and, most importantly, people is a long way from being repaired.

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15 thoughts on “A long time to heal

  1. Sorry I’ve been AWOL girls, dratted work!

    Cake, check.

    And don’t you just HATE it when a woman doesn’t do her job properly – really lets the team down.

  2. There is a ot of infighting between State and Local Governments, and alot of needless red tape. Also Christine Nixon, who was bloody useless as Police Chief, was made head of the Bushfire Reconstruction Authority, where she was just as bloody useless. They have not even agreed to put powerlines underground, the power companies are whining about the cost!

  3. It’s so easy to take it all for granted isn’t, Suzanne. I love Anita Heiss’s blog because she makes a point of saying ‘I’m grateful for…’

    Hope your NaNoWriMo is rocketing along!

  4. Cathy, that’s dreadful. That’s almost three years ago… And I understood the Community Fire Refuges were a priority. How sad that politicians and bureaucrats cant get their act together.

  5. We still have people in temporary accomodation after the Black Saturday fires, and, as yet,m not one Community Fire Refuge has been built due to beauracrstic infighting

  6. Hard to know Sandy, but there wasn’t a lot of damage in the Cairns waterways during the cyclone so we suspect it’s come from further south. It looks like it’s been in the water for a while… And the currents do bring all sorts of stuff onto Trinity

    I was horrified to find out how many people were still displaced nine months after Yasi. Another woman has just moved back into their house after living in her studio since the storm. I guess Brisbane residents who were severely affected by the floods are probably in the same position.

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