Four months have passed since a freak storm on Christmas Day flattened Tammie Fogarty's Gold Coast hinterland home and turned her life upside down.Her insurance company is covering temporary accommodation while engineers assess whether her house can be salvaged or will have to be rebuilt.
But as weeks turned to months and that sympathy dried up, she said she had been left to fend for herself."They just get on with their lives while we are still dealing with the aftermath and it's going to be a long time before we are back to normal again."Learning to navigate the claims process has been a slow and painful exercise.
Over the past two weeks a team of 12 QRA officers visited all of them as part of their three-monthly damage assessment and reconstruction monitoring operation.Deputy state recovery coordinator Michael Wassing was on the road inspecting the damage in some of the Gold Coast's worst-hit suburbs."We are always conscious of anyone who slips through the cracks," Mr Wassing said.
Richard Mailley's property at Tamborine Mountain was also razed. A for-sale sign now sits outside the empty block.His home on Kriedeman Road has been gutted and is now an empty shell. "People like that who are still living in those conditions while they deal with insurance, I see that as worse." If and when claims are approved, many homeowners face an uphill battle to get their property repaired because tradespeople are in such high demand."I'm not blaming anyone because we just physically do not have the people to do it," Mr McCrossin said."This has been our home for 30 years and not being here is the hardest thing of all to deal with," she said.