In a severe stroke of bad luck, the Wide Bay region has been hit twice this summer by damaging floodwaters, devastating producers and causing major destruction amongst regional communities.
If there was ever any positive to come out of a natural disaster, it is the selflessness and generosity of volunteers who go out of their way to help others in the extensive clean-up process.
BlazeAid is one of the volunteer-based organisations helping families in the Wide Bay region recover from flood damage, assisting with the rebuilding of fences and other structures on affected properties.
One of the Wide Bay coordinators for BlazeAid is South Burnett Councillor Kathy Duff, who said that two rounds of flooding in the region this year will mean that both farmers and volunteers will be working on areas that have already had to be repaired.
"BlazeAid have been working on flood recovery from Cyclone Seth repairing fences and clearing debris," she said.
"They will probably have to do the same work over again after this last lot of flooding."
Councillor Duff credited the remarkable strength of the Wide Bay communities and the role that BlazeAid played in bolstering that during a difficult time.
"The community have an amazing resilience and always rally in time of need," she said.
"We already have locals wanting to donate items to help people outside our region that had their houses flooded."
Apart from rebuilding fences, the BlazeAid team also assist in getting communities back on their feet, spending time with locals and helping out wherever they can.
"This is the fifth time that BlazeAid has been in our region and they plan to be around for quite some time," Councillor Duff said said.
"BlazeAid put money back into the economy by shopping locally. They also help to strengthen the community spirit, particularly when our local community groups and individuals step up and volunteer to cook meals for the BlazeAid workers.
"BlazeAid do a wonderful job not only with the volunteer repair work but they also help to build community morale."
BlazeAid set up camps in different towns and use them as a base when helping with disaster recovery in the area.
There are currently camps in Murgon, Woolooga and Biggenden, with most having been there since January.
"The Coordinator at the Murgon camp is Ron Murphy and he has 45 properties registered for help, and the teams have started work on 16 of those properties," Councillor Duff said.
"They have 26 volunteers registered at the Murgon camp and so far those volunteers have cleared 29.25 kms of fences and rebuilt 16.2 kms of fence."
"I would like to give a big shout out to BlazeAid and thank them sincerely on behalf of our community and the farmers for the amazing difference they have made with their help in our region."
AgForce President Georgie Somerset said the current situation was devastating for producers in the Wide Bay area who had been faced with flood damage twice in two months.
"We're really keen to hear what the impact is from people because for some I think it will be too soon to even know what the impact will be like," she said.
"There's people who got hit six weeks ago by the January floods as well who just picked themselves up and then they've been hit again."
Ms Somerset encourage affected landholders to fill out one of the damage surveys on offer from the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries or AgForce so that the full scale of damage can be understood and funding can be sourced.
"We're trying to map the impact at the moment, so DAF have got an online survey out and so have AgForce," she said.
"We're also keen to understand what the impact has been on grain crops, so we're looking at what the erosion has been like. Also we know there's been some big sprouting and downgrading issues so what we're trying to do is get as much information and data as possible.
"We'll certainly be talking to the government about what the disaster category might be and how we might work through that, but what we really need people to do is to actually populate those maps so we've got as much information as possible."
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