Clean-up continues: Life in Mirboo North two months on

Months after horrific storms ripped through this South Gippsland hamlet the recovery is still ongoing, physically and emotionally.

Two months on from the devastating storms and complete power blackout which isolated the South Gippsland township of Mirboo North, and volunteer Bernadine ‘Deanie’ Brullo has worked her way through a list of 300 calls for help, funding, and assistance.

But the road to recovery remains long and windy, littered with greenwaste and fallen trees which locals are worried will be a bushfire hazard come the summer.

Ms Brullo, along with the other volunteers from the Mirboo North Storm Cell group, have whittled down their list of distress calls to less than 30.

Providing everything from help cleaning up fallen timber, food and grocery packages, and welfare checks, the volunteer group have been inundated with requests for help since the intense storm event hit the region in February this year.

“It started with a Facebook post … and people came in quite traumatised,” Ms Brullo said.

“And as people were coming in, others with chainsaws were coming and asking where they could help. We’d give them addresses for properties in need, and from there it got bigger and bigger.”

Mirboo North storm damage and clean up, volunteers Bev Cook, from Mirboo North, and Bernadine "Deanie" Brullo, from Thorpdale, who have worked at the centre since the storms hit. Picture: Yuri Kouzmin

But despite the generosity of the community, the clean up and recovery for the township is sluggish, as the volunteer group come up against bureaucratic roadblocks.

“A lot is down to needing arborists and excavators, and we haven’t got the funds to do that … because we’re a volunteer organisations, in some ways we’ve skipped the red tape but in other ways we cannot receive the funding other groups can,” Ms Brullo said.

The group’s main issue remains finances.

“People are still waiting for insurance assessors to come through, and they can’t touch (fallen timber) yet, they can’t start their clean-up process.”

The State Government recently announced additional resources to process storm debris, with all proceeds from the sale of by-products to be invested in the community.

Emergency Recovery Victoria will also set up eight facilities across South Gippsland to process more than 300 tonnes of sawlog, 3000 tonnes of firewood, and green waste to be turned into mulch.

Environment minister Steve Dimopoulos said the ongoing clean-up of green waste in South Gippsland will also reduce bushfire risk “while protecting trees that provide important habitat to native animals”.