And that’s just with one firm.
FMG Insurance chief executive Chris Black told Rural News the company had already received more than 1000 claims totaling about $5million and more were still coming in.
Black’s visited the area hit by winds up to 140kmh, with one gust recorded at 204kmh. He says it’s a huge event which has caused extraordinary damage.
Most claims are for farm buildings such as hay barns, but there’s been damage to houses with roofs blown off and windows broken.
“We’ve also got quite a number of milk claims as well because the power has been off and milk has been lost because people haven’t been able to get access to a generator to run their dairy shed in time.”
Up to 20 FMG staff from around the country have been deployed
to the area.
“They are visiting clients and just making sure they are alright to start with, then working though the various claims they have. Some people have between 25 and 30 claims because the wind has just gone right through their property.
“We’re tracking and assessing these claims and then getting immediate repairs underway so that things are watertight.”
Black says it may take a few weeks to process all the claims. He talked to one family who have farmed in the region for generations and say they’ve never seen or been aware of an event like this.
Federated Farmers Dairy’s local chairman, Derek Gibson, says the biggest task for farmers now is cleaning up the mess left by the storm and in particular dealing with the number of trees that have been blown down and blocked races and damaged other infrastructure such as fences and buildings. A lot of hay barns were blown apart.
“Obviously farmers want to get these back up before the autumn rains arrive. Dealing with some of the trees will require some big machinery so that’s going to be an ongoing thing for a little while.”
The other concern is the loss of maize crops, says Gibson. Whole paddocks have been flattened.
“It’ll be hard to tell until those crops are harvested what losses have occurred.”
A positive is that while there will be some milk production losses as a result of the storm, he doesn’t expect these to be as high as originally feared.
