Collective efforts provide relief for forgotten victims of disasters

 

Written by: Louisa L on 5 June 2021

Australia is beset by disaster, but you wouldn’t know it without scratching the surface of laid-back Dunbogan village on Birrpai Country beside the Camden Haven River, just south of Port Macquarie. 

‘Been there Dunbogan’ T shirts once sold from Dunbogan Boatshed. Even the riverbank’s civic artworks don’t impose – life-size corten steel silhouettes include a dog taking a dump. 

Not all are so light-hearted. An artwork by Rick Reynolds, one of three in the wider area, marks the height of historical floods. 

The whole of Dunbogan and much of nearby Laurieton was one of the worst hit in last March’s catastrophic floods. Now a rusted old man silhouette wears a life jacket, snorkel and mask. 

Survival has many mechanisms, including laughter. 

Easy to forget

Across from the taped-off Boatshed which was boat hire, café, fishing shop combined, every house went under. The single employee of the fish and chip shop lived next door. She awoke to knee deep rising water, and spent the night on the shop’s counter. A long-term worker, she lost everything in her rental and will not return to work. Caravan park residents, even those built on second storeys to protect from flood, saw their community smashed. 

Much of neighbouring Laurieton was deluged, not only from below as waters rose, but as drains were overwhelmed and water cascaded down Dooragen, or North Brother mountain.  

From 1898 huge break walls began to tame the once deadly river entrance. The Camden Haven area became a quiet backwater, so far barely touched by the deluge of rapacious over-development swamping the east coast. 

It became easier to forget the deadly power of nature, to ignore generally unpoliced building regulations banning ground floor living areas.

It was front page news for a week or so, with occasional media flood-flashbacks. The clean-up seemed to be over, though half of the two local newspapers deal with flood aftermath, overwhelmingly voluntary. For many, forgetting is not so easy.

Banking bad and insurance

To get reasonably priced flood or fire insurance, you need to live where it doesn’t flood or burn.  

At least this time insurance companies didn’t inform residents, as they did in northern NSW in 2017, that the sad stinking piles of their belongings, often everything people owned, had to remain inside houses until assessors arrived. Instead, they were removed by a goodwill volunteer army. 

Walls were scrubbed and repainted. Then checks uncovered dangerous black mould. In June, houses remain empty.

The brief royal commission into banks and insurance companies mean people won’t have to face such awful treatment as in the past, but only if they have the strength to fight back.

In ‘Banking Bad’, journalist Adele Ferguson gave public voice to those who stood up – sometimes for decades before having outrageous injustices dealt with by the banking and insurance industry. She meticulously and powerfully documented how corporations, their compliant governments and tame state “enforcement” agencies conspired against corporate victims, to threats of bankrupting legal action rather than medals for heroism. 

Insurance companies are now settling even (very rare) vexatious claims. Pay up to shut up is the modus operandi. Settling with those who might spearhead negative publicity and inspire others to claim is top priority. They bank on most people being too devastated and isolated to fight back. A few dollars here and there can save a whole lot more on the bottom line. 

Passing commentary

Delay also benefits insurance giants. Years after the 2017 floods, a single mother still living in a caravan spoke of her shame at being homelessness. 

Why wasn’t it front page news instead of passing commentary? And all the other stories? Why are the oppressed made to feel shame? How many Australians remember the viciousness of the banks and insurance companies, the compliance of governments which bleat that they represent the people? The royal commission lasted only two months in payment of lifetimes of damage.

During the 2019 fires this writer was in Laurieton evacuation centre and wrote, “As the emergency unfolded on Friday, local radio announced Victoria’s Kinglake residents were finally receiving compensation, eight years after bushfires destroyed their homes. The announcement provided no comfort in this new disaster zone.” 

Nor this one, unless collective power again shakes the corporate profit machine.

Collective disaster efforts are a stark contrast to insurance vultures

Louisa L.
The massive and heroic efforts, and small kindnesses, from paid and volunteer workers, neighbours, family and complete strangers during the huge natural disasters across Queensland and north-eastern New South Wales have been justifiably well documented in the media.

It made this writer, no expert in any of it, but seeing and hearing first hand, close up, reflect a little.

The floods near the Queensland/NSW border, began on Thursday. By Sunday morning, in tiny Uki’s general store, residents quietly bought rubber gloves, scrubbing brushes and cleaning products to head up the road to devastated Murwillumbah, a situation replicated across the massive flood and cyclone affected areas. At a handwritten sign, “Dry clothes” beside neatly folded piles, a woman smiled as she took what she needed.

Fifty metres away, a group of roadworkers gathered for the next shift cutting, shovelling and bulldozing. To illustrate their task, just one back road, from the north to Kyogle, had hundreds of rockfalls, land slips and fallen trees. It was dangerous work, but by that Sunday morning the road was already cleared. Occasionally where a huge slip occurred, only one lane was open, but people could get through to their families, and essential supplies delivered. Multiply this by hundreds of roads over many thousands of square kilometres.

But on Monday morning, as workers in Lismore were using giant scoops to dump victims’ sad and stinking piles of belongings into trucks to stop the spread of disease, and thousands were scrubbing or hosing filthy floors and walls, insurance companies announced that victims were not to remove anything from homes before assessors arrived. 

Many of the poorest residents live in the low lying, normally sweltering central Lismore area, near local small to medium businesses. Few residents or businesses had insurance, because it costs up to five thousand dollars a month, $60,000 a year. To get reasonably priced flood insurance, you need to live where it doesn’t flood. South and north Lismore residents, which also went under were in a similar boat, lacking a paddle.

As the emergency unfolded on Friday, local radio announced Victoria’s Kinglake residents were finally receiving compensation, eight years after bushfires destroyed their homes. The announcement provided no comfort in this new disaster zone.

No wonder Malcolm Turnbull copped it from Lismore residents with his promise of low interest loans. You can pay taxes all your life, one man said, and get nothing from government when you need it.

NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian was equally unconvincing, saying if the insurance companies didn’t act fairly, “They’ll have me to answer to.” Maybe they’ll be quaking in their boots. More likely it will be business as usual from these vulture corporations who trade in human fear and misery and, as is the imperialist imperative, put profits first.

Weaknesses amid powerful disaster response

Louisa L.

Things have progressed tremendously since the terrible losses and hardships of epic floods past, where families sat on their roofs for weeks waiting for rescue.

Lismore’s levee, which saved it from the four previous floods, was designed to overflow slowly one section at a time, the delay allowing most  people to save some belongings and evacuate. Weather forecasting is unimaginably better than in the 1974 flood, or earlier ones.
By late Sunday afternoon, once there was no danger of flooding others downstream, pumps cleared most of the water quickly, while power, sewage systems and water filtration in most small towns upstream had already been restored, and roads cleared.

Lismore Hospital, the largest in the region prepared well for a possible influx of patients. Managers postponed elective surgery, and sent home all patients who could safely leave. Yet many staff were stranded away from their homes and families, by failure to ensure they left early enough. Younger people who had no experience of flooding were particularly caught out. 

Byron Bay Council was uncontactable throughout the weekend, despite floods in three suburbs. An emergency meeting was eventually held, but residents were furious, especially when they were originally told to take their destroyed belongings to the tip themselves within two days or to get neighbours (also flooded) to help. 

New Brighton residents had no warning they’d be flooded. At 2am on Friday, with water already chest deep, emergency texts alerted them to evacuate, far too late. In previous floods, every property was doorknocked. In most places this didn’t occur. Given that emergency services were co-ordinated from Newcastle, 600 kilometres to the south, communication breakdowns were unavoidable. Who would have heard of New Brighton or how many people lived there? Who knew what water levels upstream would have meant flooding?

A former SES volunteer from Lismore told this writer about the disconnect. She’d rung the flood hotline for assistance. “Where’s Lismore? Is it in NSW?” she was asked, and “What’s your closest town?” Similar questions followed, until the caller shouted, “You’re an idiot!” and hung up.

People on frontline phones often cop it, but the total ignorance shows systemic, not individual failing. Lismore is classified as a city. It was the epicentre of the NSW floods. The former volunteer posed a question of her own. “Imagine if I’d been 80. How would I have coped with all the questions when I was in trouble?” 

Decentralisation is a frequent government catch-cry which often masks the dismantling of unionised public services. In this case, inappropriate and sometimes dangerous centralisation of emergency services, albeit in a regional city, is cheaper. 

Media coverage, even ABC local radio, which provided warnings and reports on high rotation, rarely detailed major road closures across the border from flooded Tweed Heads in NSW and Queensland five minutes’ drive away. For people needing to cross that line, finding out what would lie ahead was difficult. Yes, there was a flood in Lismore and Murwillumbah, the Tweed Valley and the Gold Coast, and later in the poorest Brisbane suburb Logan, but little more was available.

In Queensland, while emerging disasters in working class Logan and in Rockhampton were naturally the main focus, Monday Chanel 9’s evening news didn’t mention the two flood related deaths in NSW. As far as Queenslanders knew, only two people had died.
This parochialism is a by-product of the division of Australia into states. These former colonies were cobbled together to form one country in 1901, but they continued to squabble and compete first for British patronage and more recently for US imperialist overlords. Colonial relics, they still divide and conquer this country. Reflecting this, the coverage hampered full understanding for those needing information, not news.

Naturally there will be weaknesses and errors in such a huge disaster zone, but avoidable the systemic ones need fixing. Giving more power to the people is the answer.

CCP to Aquino: Stop blaming calamity victims!

Vanguard September 2012 p. 11

The following statement was issued by the Communist Party of the Philippines following the devestating floods and landslides across the country.

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) chided Benigno Aquino III for insisting on blaming the victims whom he called “hard-headed” for residing in areas prone to flooding and other calamities.

“Aquino is engaged in a blame game in an abject attempt to deflect criticism from his government’s gross failure to put into place the necessary infrastructure for disaster prevention and preparedness.”

“Over the past two days, Aquino has been going the rounds of evacuation centers dealing out bags of temporary relief to flood victims in a desperate effort to save face. Still, he could not suppress his contempt for the toiling masses when he bared his disgust at people who insist on holding on to their homes and property despite the dangers posed by the massive floods that swept their houses,” said the CPP.

“The large majority of the victims of the floods belong to the poorest sections of the Filipino people who reside near creeks and riverbanks and other flood prone areas, not out of choice, but out of desperation in the face of their grave socio-economic conditions, lack of employment, low income levels and the absence of affordable housing,” said the CPP.

“For two years now, the Aquino regime has failed to undertake the construction of canals and floodways long identified to be necessary to address the state of decay and insufficiency of the current flood control system in Metro Manila and other areas prone to floods,” pointed out the CPP.

“Since assuming power in 2010, Aquino has cancelled P1.9 billion worth of flood control projects purportedly because these were tainted with anomalies,” said the CPP. “Yet, the fact that no one has been charged for plunder or corruption arising from these contracts entered into by the previous government, and that not one of these projects have been revived, only prompts the people to think that Aquino and his minions are simply busy negotiating their own kickbacks from these contracts.”

In an earlier statement, the CPP also pointed out that the Aquino regime has failed to put into place the necessary protocols to “control the greed for water” of hydroelectric power companies which endanger the people’s lives and their livelihood in their practice of filling their dams to dangerous levels only to open the floodgates at the last minute.

The CPP further pointed out that the Aquino regime is too busy enticing foreign companies to carry out mining operations of denuded forests and has failed to put into place any big-scale reforestation project, especially in the Sierra Madre mountains in Luzon.

Meanwhile, the CPP scored the oil companies for deceiving the people when it announced yesterday that they would implement a price freeze amidst the great devastation. “This is plain hypocrisy, considering that they just raised oil prices last August 7, at the height of the torrential rains and floods, while people were busy confronting the floods.”

Levy corporate monopolies, not the working people

Vanguard February 2011 p. 3

Prime Minister Gillard is looking to a tax levy to finance rebuilding after the floods. This is a device to suck money out of the people to provide new infrastructure for big business and to protect their bloated profits.

A tax levy plays on people’s emotions, and their generosity that has already been magnificently demonstrated. Instead of hitting hard-up ordinary people for rebuilding costs, the government should chase the really big dollars squirreled away by the mining companies and banks. A super profits tax on these parasites would win great support from the people, provided it was used to benefit the whole nation, not just the big corporations and mates of the politicians.

A poll conducted by the Australia Institute found 81% in support of a banking super profits tax, and 67% still wanting a mining super profits tax, in spite of Gillard’s diluted version.

As an example, Executive Director Richard Denniss quoted figures from the Commonwealth Bank’s annual report which showed interest expenses fell from $21.2 billion in 2009 to $20.3 billion in 2010; its interest expense as a share of liabilities fell from 3.6 to 3.3%; and its interest expense as a share of assets fell from 3.4 to 3.1%. Yet, the Commonwealth Bank outdid the others in jacking up interest rates and crying poor.

“These are their own figures,” said Dr Denniss. “It is interesting that none of the big four cite their own annual reports in their submissions to the (Senate) inquiry. They are telling their shareholders about the good job they are doing keeping interest expenses down while telling the public and the Parliament their interest costs are rising. What’s good enough for the miners should be good enough for the banks.”

Also sand-bagging their profits are a host of insurance companies sliding their way out of flood-damage claims. Like the big mining monopolies and banks, they are gorged on wealth and fenced off by armies of lawyers adept at writing fine print.

Sure, the government will need money to support rebuilding efforts, but let’s start with these fat cats for a change. After all, it was working people’s taxes that paid for much of their infrastructure in the first place, plus government concessions that still allow them to get away with paying less tax than the rest of us.

Gillard hopes to ingratiate her government with the big US, European and local monopoly capitalist corporations that dictate western imperialism. She plays the same tune as the most conservative and right-wing economists with their obsession over a budget surplus. This is their trick to justify social spending cuts and low wages to keep the people on the back foot. The initial cutbacks will hit jobs in the school building program, the green car innovation fund, solar energy schemes and other carbon emission reduction projects.

The floods in Queensland may have closed down much of the coal production, but the shortage of coal has been reflected in higher prices and profits are still on the way up. Gillard has not only promised to construct new roads, railways and ports for the coal monopolies, she has knocked out the competing alternative energy industries.

The working people united and powerful in the flood crisis

Vanguard February 2011 p. 1
Bill F.

While the awesome might of nature has brought massive floods to devastate thousands of square kilometres across Australia, from north Queensland through to the southern states, it has also unleashed another powerful force; the power of the working people.

As white settlement expanded in Australia in the 19th Century, many towns and communities were built in valleys or on ancient flood-plains to be near the rivers and creeks that provided water for the populations and for agriculture and small industry. But Australia has always had floods, nature’s recovery mechanism for the flora and fauna following periodic and prolonged years of drought.

In the second half of 2010, La Niña brought a series of heavy rainfalls that signalled the end of the long drought. In a year of record heat, it was also a year of record rainfall and flooding. The climate scientists say that extreme weather events, such as cyclones and heat waves and shifting weather patterns will become more frequent unless carbon emissions are reduced.

Socialist values shine through
When the flood waters spilled into houses, farms and shops, surging over roads and railway lines, cutting off power and isolating whole communities, destroying infrastructure, and taking both lives and livelihoods, the people stood together in heroic resistance.

At a time of crisis they instinctively turned away from the dog-eat-dog values of capitalism and looked to their families, friends and neighbours for mutual support. In every town and city, complete strangers also arrived to help people evacuate or build sand-bag barriers against the rising waters.

Professional and volunteer Emergency Services, police and fire-fighters were often stretched thin, but worked tirelessly to rescue trapped people and to coordinate and bolster the toiling lines of ordinary working people. Many thousands were mobilised and arrived from adjoining towns and suburbs to help their neighbours, bringing food, clothing and all sorts of equipment.

All of a sudden, private ownership, private property didn’t seem important. Everybody’s life and property were important, had to be saved. The spirit of collective effort, of working in a common cause, overcame the selfish, competitive code of capitalism and its cynical contempt for ‘human nature’.

As the waters recede and people begin to return to their flood ravaged homes and farms, the collective spirit still prevails, with all hands helping to clean up, to cart away rubbish, to give practical and emotional support to those hit hardest. Donations continue to pour in. It gives people confidence to know they are not alone and can rely on the support of their communities and the Australian people in general.

Imagine harnessing this spirit to change Australia for the better, creating a new society based on and promoting the relationships between people that have been seen in the floods. It gives confidence that the working people can win our full independence as a nation and march forward to build socialism.