SES and ADF members started conducting rapid damage assessments in a small section of East Moama on Thursday morning but MRC’s chief executive Terry Dodds said recovery was heavily going to rely on the allocation of funding.
While the Victorian Government was quick to announce the disaster allowance and the disaster payment for people in Echuca and Rochester, residents in Moama are only eligible for the disaster allowance at this point in time.
Mr Dodds said the only way the community would be eligible for state or federal funding is if people in the community shared the extent to which they had been impacted or were going to be impacted.
“Flood recovery is going to take months and the quicker we get the economic recovery gain, the better it will be for the whole community,” he said.
MRC’s director of community and economic development Zoe Croft said although the council was conscious of survey fatigue, they needed to be able to present the data to receive adequate funding for the region.
“We have three surveys; a business impact survey, a Murray Regional Tourism survey and a reporting damages survey,” Ms Croft said.
“With the business impact survey, we don’t want to know what’s happening now or what might be happening in two weeks time or at the end of December. We want to know your absolute worst case scenario because then council can go out and say we need ‘x’ amount of dollars to assist our businesses in recovery.
“This is the third summer gone essentially so we really want to push all businesses to fill these out. I understand there may be some repetitive duplications of questions but this is really important. We need to be able to show the ongoing impact the floods will have to our region.”
Council is asking all businesses affected in any way by the current flood event to complete the 2022 business impact survey. The information gathered in this survey will be instrumental in the council’s work to advocate to government for adequate financial support to help the business community recover from the significant effects of the flood.
To complete this survey visit https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfwTv2JfL4aoY3wCT2nyPhrvs8_dzYli0QzTL6f6BnHRgtdOQ/viewform
Murray Regional Tourism (MRT) has developed an industry-wide survey that will enable MRT to elevate the plight of the region’s tourism vendors. It will help efforts to advocate for recovery assistance that is appropriate, timely and all-encompassing.
The council is asking that all tourism-related businesses (including retail, hospitality and businesses servicing tourism businesses) please complete the survey, which closes on Wednesday, November 16.
To complete this survey visit https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/7K3MS6N
The Department of Primary Industries (DPI) Natural Disaster Damage Survey can be used to record damage to primary production and animals from natural disasters such as floods. The information gathered in this survey will help the government understand the scale and regional distribution of the impact of a disaster on agriculture and target resources and assistance in an area.
To complete this survey visit https://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/emergencies/emergency/community/primary-industries-natural-disaster-damage-survey
Meanwhile, Murray River Council has asked all heavy vehicles to use the old Meninya St Bridge rather than the new Dhungala Bridge.
