Operation Outreach launched to find and help bushfire victims
People hit hard by the NSW summer bushfires will be offered financial help under a new plan to target those who have not yet claimed support. The $8.5m program involves help from local councils, Service NSW, Resilience NSW and charities.
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Dedicated teams will track down bushfire victims across the state who have “fallen through the cracks” to get them the help they need.
From this week, a new state government program called Operation Outreach will seek out families, individuals and businesses who have failed to claim any support.
NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro said officers will actively go out into communities and “ensure contact has been made with every single person” impacted by the catastrophic summer bushfires.
“The thing that keeps me awake at night is knowing that people have fallen through the cracks,” Mr Barilaro told The Sunday Telegraph.
“There are people who are traumatised … there are people that are isolated in regional and rural communities who just don’t know what’s available.
“It does worry me because the pressure of COVID has really doubled down on the impact of the fires on individuals and businesses.
“I don’t want to get a year down the track knowing that someone was left behind and we could have helped them at some point.”
The $8.5 million program involves local councils, Service NSW, Resilience NSW and charities including the Red Cross.
With mental health a major issue in bushfire-affected areas, Mr Barilaro said many victims were not in the “right state of mind” to reach out for help.
“Some of these people are so traumatised, the idea of jumping on the Service NSW website, filling out a form or turning up to a recovery centre meeting is just so foreign – their headspace isn’t there,” he said.
Mr Barilaro said the coronavirus crisis may have created more confusion around the grants available to struggling small businesses.
“When you’re a small-business owner, you don’t have a finance section or a HR department – you’re doing everything and in times of crisis, when you’re under a lot of pressure and the banks are knocking on your door and the landlord is knocking on the door, you’re not thinking what am I eligible for,” Mr Barilaro said.
“I think COVID has come and hit everybody and now there’s confusion around grants that are available for bushfires, grants that are available for COVID business support, JobSeeker, JobKeeper, all of it so we will be reaching out to businesses to make sure they are eligible for everything.”
Funding for Operation Outreach comes from the Disaster Funding Arrangement (DFRA) which is jointly funded with the federal government.
RISING FROM THE ASHES
With her arm wrapped around her nine-year-old son, Rebecca Sloane sat with her family and looked on as a bulldozer cleared away the remains of their bushfire-destroyed home.
“It’s quite sad, actually,” Ms Sloane said as crews arrived on Thursday afternoon to remove the ruins of her Yowrie property on the NSW south coast.
“Nearly 20 years of collecting things and just seeing after they removed the tin roof, there’s just nothing. It’s all gone.”
But she won’t be beaten by the catastrophic New Year’s Eve bushfires.
Sifting through the rubble of her two-storey, mud brick house, Ms Sloane said the clean-up marked “new beginnings”.
“At the end of the day, it’s closure – it’s a brand new start,” she said.
Ms Sloane and her partner of 24 years, Bermagui SES Commander Marty Wraight, are now planning to rebuild a new home – and their lives.
And they aren’t alone.
Across the state, bushfire clean-up crews have so far cleared more than 1300 properties.
Some victims will stay-put on the same land while others have decided to start afresh elsewhere.
In Conjola Park, the state’s black summer wiped out 89 houses, devastating the small township.
One of those was the lakeview home of retiree Geoff Manias with the fire also destroying his much-loved “Big Red” – a 1972 Indy America Maserati – one of four in Australia.
But instead of sending the burnt-out car carcass to the tip, his new house designs include using the Maserati as “a monument to fires”.
“I was going to put her on a tank stand and let her slowly rust away,” Mr Manias said.
After feeling “relief” when his block was cleaned up two weeks ago, Mr Manias, who lost his wife to cancer five years ago, is ready to rebuild.
“I’ve got two choices – I either get over it and get on with it or I become a sad, sour old bugger and that’s not my way,” the 68-year-old said.
Not far from Mr Manias’ place, work is just starting on Jodie Hawken’s new family home.
The mum-of-two had her property cleared in March and now she and her husband Steve hope to be in their new five-bedroom home by Christmas.
“We feel like we can finally start moving forward,” Mrs Hawken, who still has nightmares, said.
“Waiting for the clean-up was like waiting for a funeral to happen. Once that happened, that was our breakdown moment.”
On the outskirts of Cobargo, nine-year-old Bella Olsson and her dad Tony have been delivered a temporary accommodation pod while he builds a new, small steel-frame house.
Mr Olsson lived next door to his 80-year-old parents on a property but when their house was destroyed in the bushfires – and his survived – he moved out so they had somewhere to stay.
The father and daughter had been living in his caravan until the heated, shipping container pod arrived earlier this month- just as temperatures started plummeting.
“She never complained once the whole time,” Mr Olsson, a seafarer, said of Bella.
Originally published as Operation Outreach launched to find and help bushfire victims