While 78 per cent of the total 50,494 claims in Brisbane have been finalised,the Insurance Council of Australia says 22 per cent are still open.
Some Sherwood homes are taking so long to repair after the 2022 floods,people have walked away.Tony Moore
In February 2022,23,400 Brisbane homes and businesses,plus 200 community groups,were flooded across 177 suburbs,according to.
“This has been very,very stressful,” one man at Sherwood said on the weekend as he spoke of an extremely complicated year of slow insurance repairs after about 30 centimetres of floodwater came through his raised ground floor,above his garage.
“I just want it over now,” said the man,who asked not to be identified because he feared his insurance claim would be further delayed.
The man,who lives near the Sherwood Arboretum,told of people in his street just walking away from their homes.
“Insurers seem to be struggling to get particular trades. My quote was accepted a long time ago – probably in June or July – but since then,progress has been very slow.”
The man’s family home was insured through the Commonwealth Bank’s CommInsure,but it was later sold to Hollard Holdings.
He told of recently waiting on the phone for 50 minutes to finally get through,only to find daylight savings meant the Sydney insurance office had closed.
“The[house] strip-out was very quick,and we’ve now had it mould sanitised,which didn’t get finished until after Christmas,but it is just so slow,” he said,adding that one builder told him he had 30 claims.
The man said one nearby family walked away because they had no insurance. Another family sold because the repairs were too complex.
One of the Sherwood homes still awaiting repairs this month – a year after the 2022 floods.Tony Moore
“I think each dwelling needs a single point of contact. The problem is,you are dealing with three or four different people and no-one seems to be on top of the progress of the different trades.”
He said some flood-affected families were not inclined to push because “there were many who were worse off”.
“You look at northern New South Wales and there were three floods in two months. I don’t think I could have coped with that.”
In other council areas across south-east Queensland,the insurance clear-up rate is faster than Brisbane,most likely because there were 10 times the number of claims in the capital.
Insurance claims across south-east Queensland after the February 2022 floods
Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner said the council had reviewed the sporadic operations of the Mud Army in 2022,and it would now be organised by Volunteering Queensland.
“A large number of people were signed up,but then we had a delay in the start because of the weather system,” he said.
“The state government had closed down schools and told people to stay at home,and that was exactly the time we wanted to gear up the Mud Army.
“One of the big lessons was that rather than put all the eggs in one basket and having all the Mud Army begin in one go on one particular day,we progressively gear it up.
“We would have smaller groups of Mud Army volunteers gearing up over a number of days.”
Schrinner said that in December 2022,the council also asked the state government to investigate alternative designs in the manufacture of private pontoons – now made from polystyrene – which ended up floating across Moreton Bay to Moreton Island during the flood.
“We would also like to see some form of registration system on the pontoons,so we know who owns them.”
He also said Brisbane City Council’s Severe Weather Alert had attracted about 22,000 new registrations since the February 2022 floods.