Black Saturday survivors left in the cold


Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 07/05/2009

Reporter: Heather Ewart

Today marks three months since the devastating Black Saturday bushfires wreaked havoc on Victoria and many of the survivors are still awaiting permanent accommodation. With the winter season fast approaching many are anxious about how they will cope.


KERRY O'BRIEN, PRESENTER: It's exactly three months since the Black Saturday bushfires wreaked havoc in Victoria.

Many of the survivors are still struggling to cope. Depression is a growing problem as the winter sets in and the reality of lost lives, the fire devastation and the slow rebuilding process hits home.

Many survivors are also complaining about the huge amount of paperwork they have to complete to access financial help from the bushfire appeal. And authorities are now considering introducing an identity card for all survivors to minimise red tape. The Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority says it's doing the best it can in unprecedented circumstances, but for some communities like Kinglake, frustrations are building, as Heather Ewart reports.

RODNEY ELWERS: This is my patch. This is where I live. This is my address, 299 National Park Road, this is where I live. It's my house.

HEATHER EWART, REPORTER: Winter has come early to Kinglake, and exactly three months on since Black Saturday, the locals know the weather is going to get much worse. For those still camping on their burnt-out sites, life is tough and very cold.

This is Rodney Elwers, whose home is now a caravan on the block.

RODNEY ELWERS: It's going to snow this year - it snowed last year, but this year we're going to get a good dump, guaranteed. Guaranteed. So it's just chin up and go for it.

HEATHER EWART: And you're in a caravan.



RODNEY ELWERS: With busted window, and it leaks...

HEATHER EWART: Why stay here? Would you rather move somewhere else?

RODNEY ELWERS: It's my block.

CAROLYN FENNELL: It's funny how fire can be your friend but then your foe at the same time.

HEATHER EWART: This is Rodney's neighbour, Carolyn Fennell, and her 15-year-old daughter, Ebony. Their home was also burnt out. They're living in a-self contained unit put up by the State Department of Human Services, and Carolyn worries about those in her street who weren't so fortunate

CAROLYN FENNELL: The people in caravans, I don't know how they're going to cope through this winter. Some don't even have cooking facilities and - you know, how are they going to cope? The depression's going to set in. So we've got to all be there to keep an eye on each other and just be a shoulder to cry on.

HEATHER EWART: This is Mike Morant and his partner, Julia Holmes. Their property is a few kilometres down the road, and they're expecting their first child in September.

MIKE MORANT: It's basically it's our rental property where we were living has burnt. That's gone. That place we were building and almost finished is burnt. Our business was burnt. We left here on the Sunday afternoon after the fires - we were up here and we had nothing. We had our dog and the clothes on our back. So we believe that we would be helped.

HEATHER EWART: And down the mountain at the Yarra Glen community relief centre, this is Norm Archibald. He's a volunteer, and his home was also burnt out.

NORM ARCHIBALD: At 72 I didn't want to have to start all over again. But I realise, you know, I have to. I can't look back. And the people here have helped me realise that. It's only good things ahead, not bad.

HEATHER EWART: All of the residents here, of course, have different stories to tell. But they do share one common thread. As winter sets in, so, too, does the harsh reality that rebuilding is going to be a long, slow and arduous process, and they'll have to work their way through a maze of paperwork and bureaucracy to get there.

It starts with trying to get their blocks cleared. Grocon, the body funded by the Federal and State Governments to do the clean-up, is clearing 200 blocks a week. Rodney Elwers has been waiting for them ever since registering soon after the fires, and he's finally expecting them tomorrow. But he's not counting on it, because he says the authorities have already broken promises made to him from the outset.

RODNEY ELWERS: They said, "No worries, we'll organise you a two-bedroom fully self-contained unit." Well, it's now reversed, and they'll offer me a small caravan with an annex. And I went, "That's not what you said at the start," and they've gone, no, because I'm a single bloke, that's all they're going to supply.

HEATHER EWART: He already has his sister's borrowed van, but wouldn't mind a portable shower and toilet. He says that, too, was promised but never came. He's a CFA volunteer and a landscape gardener by trade, and once his block is cleared, he's decided to go it alone.

RODNEY ELWERS: Bugger the DHS - I'm going to do it all by myself now. I'll go for the big grants that are promised to us, and see what happens there. But any other small stuff that they say, "We can do this, this, this," I'll go out and resource it myself.

HEATHER EWART: Norm Archibald knows the feeling, though he has no quarrel with the authorities, especially since the block where his 100-year-old farmhouse once stood has just been cleared.

NORM ARCHIBALD: It's been slow. You have that fear initially that you're going to be left behind and you're going to miss out.

HEATHER EWART: Norm Archibald and his wife raised 10 children on this place. He was uninsured and is eligible for grants under the Bushfire Appeal. But he's not taking any chances. He organised this disused classroom using his own resources to become his home.

NORM ARCHIBALD: I've just got to divide it up, create a bedroom, lounge room obviously or sitting area, get the power back on, and hopefully we're in business.

HEATHER EWART: For others, it's not quite so straightforward, as Carolyn Fennell knows. She's the business manager at middle Kinglake Primary School and doesn't like some of the stories she's hearing.

CAROLYN FENNELL: I've noticed a lot of them actually starting to get a lot worse with their depression than what they were after it first happened.

I have heard of a few incidents of marriages breaking up - where they just haven't been able to cope with what's gone on.

HEATHER EWART: For people close to breaking point, she says the paperwork and proof of identity needed to access financial help is overwhelming.

CAROLYN FENNELL: I just think it's just too much, far too much paperwork that they're asking you to fill in. And for every time you go for a grant, you have to do it all again, you have to go and get your licence photocopied again, health-care card, fill out all exactly the same paperwork, and you would think they would have it all on record so you wouldn't have to go through it two or three or four times.

HEATHER EWART: It's a complaint the head of the Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority, Christine Nixon, hears over and over on her travels.

CHRISTINE NIXON, BUSHFIRE RECONSTRUCTION AND RECOVERY AUTHORITY: Perhaps the choices we made at the beginning were not right. Maybe an identification card of some description might have helped.

HEATHER EWART: Christine Nixon is now planning to act on the suggestions of fire ravaged communities.

CHRISTINE NIXON: Many of them say, "Look, couldn't we just have a simple card given by the Victorian Bushfire Recovery and Reconstruction Authority," so we're certainly talking to people about that, and I've talked to Centrelink, and I've talked to the Department of Human Services and they too have suggested to us perhaps that might make it easier.

HEATHER EWART: While that should come as a relief for many, it's of no help to Michael Morant and Julia Holmes. They run a rare plant nursery but they don't fit into any official category, despite the pile of forms they've completed. They've been knocked back on all their grant applications.

MIKE MORANT: Our troubles have been that we lost a home that we were building. We were only a couple of weeks away from getting our certificate of occupancy, and because we weren't officially in, we are having trouble recognised as if we've lost anything.

HEATHER EWART: For three years the couple were building their own home themselves next to their nursery and lived in rental accommodation. They couldn't get any insurance until the house was completed and they had their certificate of occupancy. The fires swept through before this could happen. They've fallen through the cracks because the house is not deemed to be their principal place of residence.

JULIA HOLMES: Because we weren't physically living there the day before the fire, we just get a generic rejection. I think the appeal, the Bushfire Appeal, actually made us feel like we could carry on, even though we'd lost everything. It was a very nurturing time, I found. But now that we have asked for charity and we've been denied, it's devastating.

HEATHER EWART: They're not the only ones that don't fit into a box and the authorities are starting to realise this.

CHRISTINE NIXON: We don't have necessarily all the answers yet. I mean, nobody's ever been in this sort of circumstance. We've never had $333 million that's been given by the community, and it just takes a little time to work through. And so as more money comes into that fund, you can then use it to make more choices.

HEATHER EWART: Christine Nixon has given an assurance that Michael Morant and Julia Holmes will not be forgotten, and right now, it seems that's the sort of assurance all the survivors are seeking.

CAROLYN FENNELL: Just try to make it easier for people to rebuild and get our lives back, because that's all what we want. We just want to be back the way we were before.

KERRY O'BRIEN: And that's one process we'll certainly stay in touch with. And the Royal Commission into the bushfires will start taking formal evidence on Monday.

Heather Ewart with that report.

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Black Saturday survivors left in the cold

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Kinglake resident Rodney Elwers at the site of his burnt home