Community
17 August, 2024
Erin helps to weather storm
'Gazza's Gossip' "Erin Easton has lived in the Douglas Shire since the age of three and now resides on a property at Wonga Beach originally owned by her parents."
This in itself is an interesting journey, but nothing like Erin’s experiences since Cyclone Jasper and the resulting deluge of rain.
Fast forward to today, the former Mossman High School student, her husband and young children are still living, temporarily, in a caravan on the family property.
The family home was insured fortunately, but Erin feels that the claims process has been a massive headache and has only just been resolved after seven months.
In another bizarre twist, Erin has been a family support worker at the Neighbourhood Centre in Port Douglas for the last seven years, so spends much of her daily life helping others through the tough times that many have experienced over the last few months. Working more closely with flood victims, she actually took on the role as community connect recovery worker for the area.
Erin recently spoke at a federal government inquiry in Cairns and then Townsville, the latter being broadcast live to Parliament. Federal MPs made note of the ongoing situation in our region and Erin believes that her voice, together with others, had hopefully created awareness of the recovery process.
With regards to insurance claims, in most cases, if you are insured and you lose your home to an event, 10 per cent of your home insurance policy can be used for accommodation. It appears that clients may have been mislead into believing that they had a guaranteed indefinite emergency accommodation covered for the duration of their rebuilds, regardless of the time frame to complete the works.
There have been situations where insurance clients have been forced out of their temporary accommodation, and because of the rental crisis, in our area, people have been put into hotels and Airbnbs. With the ensuing tourism season, people have then had to leave this holiday accommodation to make way for rooms booked earlier in the year.
Sadly, Erin certainly knows of people with simply nowhere to go.
From Erin’s experience, many insurance clients are also facing homelessness due to delays on their restorations, scope of works and rebuilds. Describing her own experience, she explained that she was presented with a scope of works, i.e. the work required and the cost, and the estimated amount was ridiculously low. She took it to a local builder and his response was that he would go broke if he charged that amount for the required work. Talking to people, she is finding that there are many inaccurate scope work figures, with examples of attempts to reinstate damaged items which should never be reinstated in homes.
To add to the stress, each time a scope of works is disputed, the process can delay works by another month. In Erin’s case this occurred six times, eventually successfullyincreasing the scope of works figure by a total of $60,000.
A term that is not liked by insurance companies is an ‘uplift’.
If you are planning on taking a payout, i.e. everyone is happy on the final figure, people can ask to receive an extra payout on top of your payout figure. This is when you take on your own building, repairs and rebuilds. The uplift is compensation for the transfer of risks for the individual client taking on the works themselves. Uplifts can vary, but a 20 per cent uplift is a common ballpark figure. Details of this can be found via the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA).
Erin strongly advises people to check everything before they agree on the final terms with their insurer. Just because they may have offered you one thing, it doesn’t mean you have to settle for that. People have a right to complain directly to their insurance company and if you are still not happy with that, once again you can approach AFCA.
Locally, if people feel they are at breaking point, they can contact the Port Douglas Neighbourhood Centre or Mossman Support Services for help. Ask to talk to their community connect workers.
I’m off to get my head around the small print, so for now it’s Gazza signing out.
Send your stories to gazza@cairnslocalnews.com.au
