Community
13 December, 2024
It’s been a year since Cyclone Jasper but many are still not home yet.
ONE year on from Cyclone Jasper and the devastating floods in the Far North, recovery remains out of reach for some, and two of those families have taken us through their journey of resilience, highlighting the unbreakable spirit of this unyielding community.
Although the signs of devastation are slowly disappearing, roads have been repaired and the mud has long been cleared out, the wounds are still open for hundreds of families who are still living through the trauma of losing their homes, their memories and their sense of safety.
This was the case for Liz and Damon Sieverts from Holloways Beach and Kirby Murtha and Jason Fagan from Machans Beach who one year after the tragedy are yet to return home.
Their testimonies highlight the resilience of a community who keeps standing up in the face of tragedy.
In the meantime, insurance companies say 10,398 claims have topped $401 milion with close to 85 per cent finalised.
However, they acknowledge that it is still taking time to finalise all claims and get houses and businesses repaired.
“Insurers acknowledge that recovery following Tropical Cyclone Jasper has been challenging. This is largely due to complex damage caused by flooding, storm surge and damaging winds,” said an Insurance Council of Australia spokeswoman.
As well, Cairns ratepayers are facing a $25m debt to fix up public infrastructure due to not being eligible for some government grants.
Can’t wait to get home
ONE year on from Cyclone Jasper and the devastating floods in the Far North, recovery remains out of reach for some and two of those families have taken us through their journey of resilience, highlighting the unbreakable spirit of this unyielding community.
Although the signs of devastation are slowly disappearing, roads have been repaired and the mud has long cleared out, the wounds are still open for hundreds of families who are still living through the trauma of losing their homes, their memories and their sense of safety.
This was the case for Liz and Damon Sieverts from Holloways Beach and Kirby Murtha and Jason Fagan from Machans Beach who one year after the tragedy are yet to return home.
Resilience
Their testimonies highlight the resilience of a community who keeps standing up in the face of tragedy.
The Sieverts live in Salwood Cl in Holloways Beach in a five-bedroom home which they had renovated to their liking. The home was the perfect place for their three young children, Jamie, 7, Alexander, 5, and Mitchell, 3, and their two pets – a dog and a cat.
“Any given day there’d be up to 10 kids playing basketball, riding their bikes, jumping on one person’s tramp, swapping to someone’s pool,” said Mr Sieverts, who’s better known in the community as The Hungry Nomad for his food truck business.
“They all miss each other like crazy. It’s a bit of a ghost town at the moment,” he said.
Tragedy struck – as it did for many – on Sunday, December 17 when the perfect storm of rain, high tides and river surges caused an abnormal amount of water to flow into the streets and homes of residents of the Northern Beaches areas.
“I took the sail down off the pool, tied the trampoline down, we swung up the swings, did the normal prep. We’re one of the highest points in Holloways Beach, we’re not in a flood zone and we’re certainly not in a storm surge zone,” Mr Sieverts said.
“I had all these plans for the Sunday to do Christmas baking with the kids,” Ms Sieverts said.
Flooding starts
“Then our neighbour, Tessa, came running and said next door was already flooding.
“I thought, ‘Surely we’re not going to flood, this is not going to happen?’
“I pulled things into our hallway, put what I could onto beds and then the water started coming up through the bathroom drains.”
The Sieverts evacuated to two neighbours’ houses. By the time they made it to the second home there were about 25 people with them.
“The neighbour’s house went under around 3pm, so we rang our neighbour Tina and asked to break into her house – their house was built up,” Mr Sieverts said.
“By that stage, it was quite a few of us. Probably seven kids, five or six dogs and cats, maybe six or seven adults,” he said.
“We rang SES, but they said it would take 72 hours for them to come.
“I did a couple of laps of the street and there’s just people standing in their gate holding their dog and a little bit of belongings in absolute shock. They’ve been our neighbours forever and we’ve never met them. I said ‘Come with us, we’ve got dry ground’. In the end it was 25 of us on a balcony waiting.”
Rescued by a stranger
The family was rescued that night by a stranger in a dinghy, they were then taken by the Navy and transported by bus to an evacuation centre in Edmonton.
What followed were devastating of weeks of returning to Holloways Beach and seeing the destruction, clean ups and fights with insurance.
This year, the family has moved six times from friends’ homes to rentals and Airbnbs. They were supposed to be able to move back in this December, but right now it seems unlikely.
“The first walk-through with the builders and insurer, and both said ‘It’s such a straightforward job guys, you will be back in three months’,” Mr Sieverts said.
“Every day we’re informing insurance and asking ‘Well, what are we doing? Where are we going?’,” he said.
“We’ve got a meeting tomorrow so hopefully within the next couple of weeks we’ll be back.
“It still doesn’t even feel real, to be honest, feels like it happened to somebody else,” Ms Sieverts said.
“The day after we were rescued I had friends calling us, saying ‘What do you need?’
“Jamie’s principal called us and said ‘I’ve heard what’s happened. I’m going away on holidays for three weeks, I want you to come stay at our place’, and we’ve never been people that have accepted help before but she was like ‘No, you’re doing this’.
Community generosity
“We went back to a friend’s house and within 24 hours we had people coming over, giving us food, giving us clothes. The outpouring of the community was phenomenal, the generosity of the community is what really helped us,” she said in tears.
“It was hard because I thought there were people much worse off than us. And if anyone deserved more help, then help those people before us,” Mr Sieverts said.
“We’ve made a lot of friends that we’ve met at the Holloways Hub, so it’s a good warm feeling being a part of the Holloways community.”
“Trust yourselves and your neighbours and help them out because they’re the ones that are going to be there when something like this happens,” he said.
“I know I’ll be more prepared for something like this. I lost a lot of drawings and things from school from my older kids that are irreplaceable. I’ll be arranging things differently,” Ms Sievert said.
“Also we want to thank you, we couldn’t have gone through this without the community, we’ve made friends through this process that will be friends for life, this has made us love our community even more,” she said.
Heartache
For Machans Beach family, Kirby Murtha, her partner Jason Fagan and their daughter Zali, 4, one year hasn’t been enough time to process all the heartbreak, stress and small victories that have come since Jasper.
“Right before Christmas last year we went to Cairns Central to go for supplies and get our Santa photos taken and it was like stepping back from all the chaos happening here to a different Cairns. It was all Christmas carols and hugs and kisses. It was emotionally overwhelming,” Mr Fagan said.
“We just wanted to have some kind of normality so I said ‘We need to get our Santa photos done’, so the lady at the boutique I help at gave me a dress to wear, Jason had to run and buy himself a pair of shoes, luckily, Zali's nice clothes where really high up so we got our Santa photos done,” Ms Murtha said.
“It was horrible because it was a small part of Cairns that was affected but it was so bad for the people there, you could see them covered in mud looking like zombies, while everyone was ready and merry for Christmas.”
Ms Murtha, who is a senior health promotion officer with Queensland Health, and Mr Fagan, who works in health management, had slowly but surely built up their dream home on Christensen St at Machans Beach.
Love Machans Beach
“We really wanted to live in Machans Beach because it’s a very beautiful community, it’s not like any other suburb in Cairns, we could picture ourselves there,” Ms Murtha said.
They had finished renovating their home when Jasper and the floods hit Machans Beach.
“We did a big yard cleanup, we taped all the windows, we tied down the caravan and stocked up on food and supplies,” Ms Murtha said.
“The road was a bit hit or miss for a couple of days, but no one thought we were going to flood.”
The flooding began from the houses across the road and not the river at the end of the street.
By the time they started to prepare to leave water started coming out from all the drains.
The family evacuated to a neighbour’s house where they waited for a night. Once the water started to subside on Monday they made their way back to a home destroyed by sewage and salt water.
“When the water went up, everything tipped, so it was just food and rubbish bobbing around. And the smell is like this muddy sewage and it was already hot,” Ms Murtha said.
“I can barely remember it. I think I’ve blanked it from my brain,” she said.
“We both work in health but we had no PPE, we were walking around barefoot not realising that the mud had sewage in it,” Mr Fagan said.
“We agreed that Zali didn’t return to the house, and she didn’t want to come back, every time we returned she just sat in the car.”
Temporary digs
They initially moved into temporary accommodation until April, then moved into a caravan for three months and finally they had their backyard shed fitted out into a granny flat where they live until today while they wait for their home to be finished.
“Our priority was having stability for Zali,” Ms Murtha said.
“We tried to make it like an adventure, whether we were at temporary accommodation or in a caravan or with family.
“She’s definitely got some PTSD from the whole thing. We’ve had to have collaborative strategies with our daycare about how we talk about the rain to her.
“I don’t even know if we’ve processed a lot of the stuff that’s happened because it’s been constant working, sorting out insurance and navigating things with the builders.”
Lots of memories
“Almost 12 months later, there’s still a lot of memories, there’s still mud on the deck, every now and then I catch a whiff of that stench from the sewage water and it takes me back,” Mr Fagan said.
As they prepare for the first year outside of their homes, both families reflect on the resilience and unity of a community that continues to rise after the tragedy.
“You’d be surprised at the support of the community. Zali's daycare gathered a whole bunch of clothes, books and toys and presented it to her, and we had amazing people help us,” Mr Fagan said.
“I think this has brought us closer as a community, I think we’ll pull through, but Cairns Regional Council really needs to stand up and look at infrastructure, it all could have been managed a whole better than it was.”
Crazy year
“It’s been a crazy year but this is a strong community, the people we know from Machans they want to stay here and are determined to rebuild,” Ms Murtha said.
“We’ve had amazing family and friends come and support us, but we’re lucky, we had contents insurance, we knew it would be really tough but we’d be OK – that’s not the case for everyone.
“This had had us talking about things we never thought before. We’ve never made an insurance claim in our lives, the cost of what it is to strip out a house and sanitise it, you’re already $40,000 behind on your insurance before anything even happens at your house. I also never thought that we might have to consider where we’re going to live in the future because of climate change and not everyone can afford to futureproof.”
