Gympie 2022 flood: Business body calls for help, 1000 insurance claims lodged

Gympie’s Chamber of Commerce has called on governments to find a way to help the region’s flood-prone businesses as more than a third of the main street’s shops remain closed following the February floods.

The head of Gympie’s business community is urging governments to start planning how to mitigate floods in the CBD as the city’s iconic main street continues to bounce back from the 2022 disasters.

Chamber of Commerce president Petra Van Beek called for talks to start as Mary St traders slowly return to the city centre three months after it was submerged under the region’s second-largest flood on record.

“The two levels of governments have combined to do a buy back of houses,” Ms Van Beek said.

“I think the next stage it might be logical to go what can we do about mitigation for here, and whether it’s trying to keep the water out or building up or moving, or just building better,” she said.

“Just something so we don’t have to do this every five years on average.”

She was encouraged by the resurrection of the street, which still bears multiple scars from the February disaster.

A count of the street’s businesses revealed one third of the 160 shops along Mary St remain closed.

This did not include shops in Cullinane’s, Hanlon’s and the James Nash arcades, which are shuttered for repairs.

This vacancy rate was expected to drop to about one quarter in the coming months though, with 18 of the 58 closed shops still expected to re-open their doors.

“It’s good to see this end of Mary St slowly, slowly come back to life,” Ms Van Beek said.

“To be in their situation … it must have been so heartbreaking.”

The closed shops are only a small part of what has been revealed as a state-wide $2 billion flood damage bill from Queensland’s triple 2022 flood disasters.

Gympie’s slice of that remains unclear.

The Gympie region has been hit by three floods in 2022, in January, February, and May.

Almost 1000 insurance claims have been lodged with three major insurers within the region following the disasters that devastated the northwest in January, flooded the city in February, and cut the highway and major bridges again in May.

Mayor Glen Hartwig ventured the February disaster had cost the region at least $100 million, and RACQ had already received 15,000 claims across southern Queensland from the February and May disasters, with 400 from Gympie, Cooloola and Maryborough.

Claims manager Trent Sayers said more than $3.6m had been paid out by the insurer in those regions already.

“Around 86 per cent of these claims are related to property damage and approximately 14 per for motor vehicles,” Mr Sayers said.

Yolanda and Tony Alford from Cooloola Paint and Panel are among thousands of residents and businesses who have suffered flood damage in 2022.

The insurer said another 48 clams had been received across the Wide Bay following the May floods, including 11 from Gympie.

Youi had received 68 claims from Gympie residents relating to the February 2022 floods, while Suncorp had received more than 500 claims from Gympie and Maryborough since that flood.

“It’s unimaginable what our customers are going through right now, and our teams are moving as fast as we can to support and help them get back on their feet as soon as possible,” Suncorp Group spokeswoman Vanessa Gourlay said.

Gympie Regional Council has spent more than $6 million on flood management and repairs in the first five months of 2022.

But its efforts to put a finger on the final figure were washed away this month.

In February 2022, Gympie was inundated by the second highest flood in its history at 22.96m. Efforts by the local council to calculate a total damage bill were interrupted by another 16m flood in May. Picture: Infinity Flights Photography.

“We were getting close to finalising the investigations … and then we got hit in May,” acting council finance manager Greg Evans told councillors on Wednesday, May 25.

“According to the rules, if we had lodged our claim for the February event and there was subsequent damage then effectively that makes the original claim redundant.

“We still haven’t gone through and finalised all of the evaluations.”

Some roads had been washed out three times and their saturation made them difficult to repair.

The council had now engaged a third party group to undertake a rapid road assessment.

Mayor Glen Hartwig said on Wednesday the impact of the disasters “was massive”.

“It will take a number of years for our staff, who are already exhausted from five months of working their tails off, to get roads back to an appropriate level and then also commence the betterment work so we cannot have to continually repair roads when these events happen,” Mr Hartwig said.

The torrential downpour in the Gympie region’s northwest in January obliterated many roads.

Even with financial help from the state and federal governments there would be delays.

“It’s not a case of a blank cheque; we need to justify every dollar that we claim,” Mr Hartwig said.

He said the council was looking at securing funding from these alternate sources “rather than have massive rate increases”.

“That’s why we ask the community to have a little bit of patience,” he said.

“(Staff) have done potholing work in the pouring rain so residents have got better road access.”

Councillor Shane Waldock said the council had “no chance” to get things fixed across the region swiftly thanks to the repeated floods.

Gympie Mayor Glen Hartwig said the region’s roads and infrastructure had been set back “years” as a result of the floods. Picture: Patrick Woods.

“We’ve lost a couple of years,” Mr Waldock said.

The Australian Insurance Council said in a media release at the start of May, before Gympie’s May flood, the total cost of the catastrophes across the Wide Bay, South East Queensland, and northern New South Wales was about $3.35 billion.

Queensland accounted for more than $2 billion of that bill.

More than 197,000 claims had been lodged across the two states.

It was the costliest flood in the country’s history, the release said, and the fifth most expensive behind the Eastern Sydney hailstorm in 1999, Cyclone Tracy in 1974, Cyclone Dinah in 1967, and the Newcastle earthquake in 1989.

The cost of these historic disasters ranged from $4 billion to $5.57 billion.

Originally published as Gympie 2022 flood: Business body calls for help, 1000 insurance claims lodged