About 6,000 homes are still without power in south-east Queensland after wild storms lashed parts of the state over Christmas and New Year.
The Gold Coast, Scenic Rim Region and Logan were some of the worst hit areas from the severe weather that brought destructive winds, intense rainfall and flash flooding.
Queensland Premier Steven Miles provided a storm clean-up update to the media on Thursday off the back of the final disaster management committee meeting for the weather event.
Mr Miles said 95 per cent of homes that lost power from the storms have been reconnected as part of a “mammoth effort” by energy workers.
“A further 2,400 homes were reconnected in the last 24 hours, so there are still 6,000 Queensland households without electricity supplied due to those storms,” he told reporters in Brisbane.
Australian Defence Force personnel also touched down in flood impacted communities on Thursday, as the state officially moved into recovery mode.
Of those ADF members, 33 were deployed to the regions of Upper Coomera, Tamborine and Cedar Vale.
An extra 20 more personnel are anticipated to be on the ground in south-east Queensland on Friday.
“They’ll be working alongside our 1,000 energy crews… clearing access roads, making sure that our energy workers can get in and get power resupplied to what are now the hardest reconnections,” Mr Miles said.
Mr Miles said 900 of the 6,000 households still without power have damage within their homes that require electrical certification.
That means those homes cannot be reconnected to power until the necessary electrical work has been completed.
“In those 900 cases… even when we get the electricity connected in their street, their house cannot be reconnected until the electrical work in the home has been checked and certified and we have grants available to assist those households,” Mr Miles said.
The Premier reassured impacted Queenslanders that grants are available to help them get the electricity work done.
About 75,874 grant applications for assistance following the storms had been received by the state government as of Wednesday – 22,894 of which have been approved.
In Far North Queensland, a total of $4 million has been given in grant payments to 24,999 residents following ex-tropical cyclone Jasper.
He announced the state government will give $1 million each to the Gold Coast City Council, Scenic Rim Regional Council and Logan City Council to help with immediate clean-up work.
“We know that there still many homes with trees down in their yards, while we’ve cleaned roads in many cases there are still trees down on the side of those roads,” Mr Miles said.
“This $1 million is so that those councils can do whatever they need to do to get those trees cleared, whether that’s bringing in contractors, whether that’s paid overtime, whatever they need to do to get those trees cleared.
“We’re particularly conscious that we could see more storms in the same area in coming days and so it’s really important that we get the clean-up work done just as quickly as we can.”
Mr Miles said he will visit the Gold Coast over the coming days followed by Cairns as well as the Wujal Wujal and Degarra communities, which were significantly impacted by the floods following cyclone Jasper.
(SKY NEWS)
