Canberra Times Letter

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This letter was submitted to the Editor of the Canberra Times

The editor,
Canberra Times
Saturday 15 February

The forgotten ones.

Four weeks to the day after the firestorm. We have just had a windstorm followed by hail and a thunder storm. The air smells of smoke, ash and dirt. It is 4:00pm, almost the precise time we abandoned our home and set off through the fires for the hospital, taking only what we stood up in.

11:00 that night, with one broken heel, a pair of crutches and little else, we checked into a hotel in Kingston. The next day we went back and discovered our home was still standing although five of our eight neighbours were not so lucky.

Ten days later, when the power was back on we moved back in. Since then we have lived a life surrounded by destruction. There are the seven burned out houses we look at from our living room. There is space in the garden where seventeen trees used to stand. We had them removed because two arborists each told us they were burned too badly to survive. All the bushes and flowers went in the fire. A twenty-seven year old garden gone in an afternoon.

And what help have we had? Well, it varies. Our employers have been very understanding and full of assistance. Mine paid for the hotel and trauma counselling. Family, friends, neighbours and anonymous volunteers responding to requests broadcast by ABC 666 all mucked in to help clear some of the small stuff from the garden. People have been fantastic.

Insurance companies? The garden was not covered by our NRMA contents or building policies. We did get the house cleaned courtesy of the contents policy - sort of. It wasn't a particularly thorough job (for example the sofa ended up worse than it started with watermarks on the cushions) and it could do with another go, dust and dirt keeps getting in - today's windstorm has just deposited yet another thin layer of ash throughout the house.

The government? Well, we registered at the Disaster Recovery Centre but all we have had is advice, mostly that we don't qualify because we haven't suffered in the categories available for assistance. Environment ACT suggested we get the trees looked at and those that won't make it taken away - at our expense. We have done just that - $2,500 it cost - the seventeen trees included a 15metre deodar cedar.

The ANZ bank? Custodians of our mortgage. It took a determined effort to contact the right people. The people at the general number didn't have a clue and messages were not returned. We were eventually advised to go into our local branch and enquire. Not a lot of use - one broken heel doesn't allow for such mobility. Finally we were told that the bank was only helping people whose homes were lost or uninhabitable. Wrong category, again.

Free concerts? Did I mention a broken heel?

Who are the forgotten ones? People like us who are living amid the reminders, the debris and the ash, smoke and dust blowing in every day. People who can't hang out washing to dry without bringing it in covered in dirt. People who have lost valued gardens. People who have suffered physical and emotional trauma. People, like my wife, who have suddenly been thrust into the role of carer, even though they are sufferers as well.

Those who have lost their homes and belongings deserved immediate assistance. This they received. However, in many ways they are surviving the after effects easier than those they've left behind, if our neighbours story is typical. Accommodation away from the smell, gifts, lots of attention, new homes to move into eventually and what looks like what will be the bulk of the aid.

But they are not the only ones to suffer. Nor are they the largest group.

It would be helpful if a few things were to happen. The first is for there to be some sort of recognition by the Government and institutions that we have and still are suffering. Although we have been lucky in that our homes survived, the after effects take some dealing with.

We would also like to have some information and certainty about when the houses surrounding ours will be cleared, when the dirt and dust might stop blowing through our houses, when fences will be replaced, when workmen will stop tramping through back-yards and if we are likely to receive any assistance restoring our garden.

I just hope that the Government and institutions realise that they are ignoring a mostly silent but significant and needy group of Canberrans.

Bernard Robertson-Dunn

Bernard and Lyndsey Robertson-Dunn's Canberra bushfire website
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