Federal cash for Hills fire victims
Victims of the Adelaide Hills bushfires will receive financial assistance from the Federal Government, Prime Minister Tony Abbott says.
Disaster recovery payments of $1000 per adult and $400 per child, and a 13-week Centrelink allowance for people whose income had been severely affected by the fire, will be made available.
“This is some modest, additional Commonwealth assistance that will be made available to victims of these terrible fires here in South Australia,” Abbott said, as he toured affected areas in Adelaide today.
“It’s not the only support people will get.”
“There are State Government programs that will assist. I imagine that insurance will cover a great deal of the damage.
“Normally in circumstances like this, there are appeals of one sort or another which are launched – I would expect that to happen now.
“While you can never really bring back the memories which go up in smoke, you can never really bring back all of those things which are so precious to people, I am confident that that which money can restore, will be restored.”
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It follows the announcement by the Country Fire Service that better weather conditions had enabled it to contain 95 per cent of the fire.
There were still a number of “hot spots” in the Adelaide Hills, near Paracombe and at the Para Wirra conservation reserve which would take time to put out, while small grass fires were started by lightning strikes on Wednesday afternoon as thunderstorms rolled over the area.
Up to 30 millimetres of rain has fallen on the Adelaide Hills fire ground overnight.
The Bureau of Meteorology said it was monitoring a tropical low near the northwest coast of Western Australia which was likely to result in a significant rain band over parts of South Australia from Friday.
Abbott toured the bushfire zone in the Adelaide Hills and met with volunteers, emergency workers and firefighters as rain continued to fall on the fire ground this morning.
He thanked service professionals and volunteers for their work during the emergency.
“The courage, professionalism, the dedication has been simply exemplary and but for the efforts of the firefighters, the police, the ambulance services, the various support services, the State Emergency Services, the Salvation Army and others – but for those efforts, there would have been much greater loss,” he said.
“All of you have been flat out since Friday and you have responded magnificently to all the challenges that you have faced.
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“I guess the other thing which is really pleasing … is the way the various services and agencies and various arms of government, the various full-time bodies, the various volunteer bodies a as well as their counterparts from interstate have worked seamlessly together.
“We know in some earlier disasters, that wasn’t the case.
“We have learnt those lessons well and we have put them magnificently into practice in the way we have responded to this disaster.”
Abbott was joined at the One Tree Hill incident command centre by Premier Jay Weatherill, who announced the number of houses destroyed in the blaze had been revised down to 27.
Weatherill said his government would provide $1 million in grants and other assistance to victims of the fires.
“The process of recovery now begins as we complete the process of making the fire grounds safe,” he said.
“I want to express and in the clearest possible terms, the courage, skill and dedication of our paid firefighters, but also our volunteer firefighters and all the other emergency services and support agencies that come to the fire ground to lend their support.
“The reason we are not standing here grieving the loss of life and even greater loss of property is because of the skill and dedication of people around us.”
Weatherill’s government has come under pressure in recent days to lower the Emergency Services Levy for volunteer firefighters.
However Abbott, who is also a volunteer firefighter, said the idea should be “treated with great caution”.
“Speaking as a rural firefighter, as a volunteer rural firefighter, we do what we do not because someone tells us to do it but because we want to do it – not because we are paid, but because we are committed to the community,” he said.
– with AAP.
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