DISASTER assistance is now available to residents of the MidCoast following a disaster declaration after the severe storms and flooding that have occurred over the past few weeks.

Assistance is being provided through the jointly funded Commonwealth-State Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements.

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Assistance available under these arrangements may include:

Help for eligible people whose homes or belongings have been damaged

• Support for affected local councils to help with the costs of cleaning up and restoring damaged essential public assets
• Financial assistance for small businesses, primary producers and non-profit organisations and
• Freight subsidies for primary producers

Council’s Community Recovery team have been assisting with calls and requests from the community for help over the past few weeks.

Council’s Director of Liveable Communities, Paul De Szell, said the team had also been completing welfare checks on those vulnerable communities impacted by the March 2021 floods.

Mr De Szell said work was continuing to clean up after the most recent flood event, along with repair and restoration works from the 2021 floods.

“The Department of Regional NSW has recently announced its Community Local Infrastructure Repair Program which has been designed to assist with the actual restoration and repair of community and recreation assets from the 2021 floods.”

This program allows Council to seek up to $7.5 million in funding.

Mr De Szell said Council is assessing where the areas of most need are in planning priorities for the use of the funding.

Insurance companies are being inundated with householders making claims against their policies whilst some claimants from the March 2021 storms are still yet to have their claims finalised.

One claimant from the March 2021 storms said, “We have only just had our household items that were restorable returned and some of our contents are still being written off – the disaster in Lismore will make finalising the claim take longer.”

By Marian SAMPSON