An increasing number of Illawarra residents, including many in Albion Park Rail, have been forced to abandon flood insurance for their homes and contents as insurance companies either lift premiums to impossible levels or tell customers they will no longer insure them at all.
In March last year, Tom and Lisa Comerford woke to hear their neighbour's rubbish bins banging into the fence of their property on Exeter Ave in North Wollongong.
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"We didn't know what the noise was until we heard our neighbour scream," Mr Comerford said.
Looking out the back window, their entire backyard had turned into a sea of brown. Then the water started coming into the house.
Not knowing when the water was going to stop rising, the couple contacted a neighbour with a two-storey house and evacuated there with their two sons.
With one son gripping onto his back like a monkey and the other walking with his hand tightly clasped, the family waded through the thigh deep floodwaters, terrified they would step on a nail, bottle or worse.
"I said to my son, whatever you do, do not let go of my hand."
After making a claim on their insurance, the family did not see a cent for eight months, and after cataloguing every item that was damaged and passing through almost half a dozen evaluators, the family has gotten back about 90 per cent of the value of what was lost. For the final 10 per cent, Mr Comerford said he's just happy to accept it.
In the meantime, however, their insurance premium has gone from $1600 to $8000 a year. After shopping around and being knocked back multiple times the family was able to find a cheaper deal at about $5500, but the Comerfords are one of a growing number of Illawarra residents who are being told their homes are uninsurable or being hit with eye-watering rises in their premiums after successive flood events inundate the region.
Tracey Jane moved into her Albion Park Rail rental in November 2021 and when it came time to renew her contents insurance in 2022 enquired about flood protection, as the home she was living in backed on to a creek.
"People were saying in the area it'd been really bad in the past, so I ended up inquiring about it," she said.
Ms Jane took out a policy with Budget Direct that included coverage for flood damage. This year, as her next renewal rolled around, she received a letter from her insurer saying she is no longer covered for flood damage.
It's a similar story for Michael Fletcher.
Mr Fletcher purchased a property that abuts a creek that crosses the Princes Highway in 1998 in Albion Park Rail.
The floods of 2011 saw his backyard go under and his property declared a flood zone two years later. This led to his insurance premium rising dramatically, but he was able to shop around to find a premium under $1000.
"I've been paying that ever since until this year, I got a letter from Budget Direct," he said.
The new premium jumped by nearly double, spurring Mr Fletcher to shop around for other policies.
This returned results thousands of dollars more expensive than the current policy, leading Mr Fletcher to stick with the hiked offer from Budget Direct. Curiously, however, inputting his address as a new customer resulted in the online form telling him insurance was not available for his home.
"It gets a little scary, because there's no other alternative," Mr Fletcher said.
"What choice do I have?"
As successive flood events inundate the Illawarra and eastern Australia, home and contents insurance is becoming a luxury. A spokesperson for the Insurance Council of Australia said insurers were walking away from offering policies in some areas.
"The costs of worsening extreme weather because of climate change is impacting the affordability and availability of insurance in some parts of Australia as insurers respond to changing risk levels and the increasing costs of reinsurance," the spokesperson said.
"It's important that customers shop around as the premium they are offered by one insurer may not be the same as offered by another insurer."
Wollongong business owner Jamie Adams said the cost of insurance for his Swan Street business, Impact Garage Doors, is prohibitive.
"To get flood insurance, we got an estimate that it was 20-odd-thousand [dollars]," he said.
The business's warehouse on Swan Street in Wollongong was flooded when waters were over a metre above ground level in March last year.
"I'm not even sure they would cover us because of the flood zone," Mr Adams said.
Opting to access disaster relief grant funds instead, Mr Adams's business was able to recoup about $15,000-$20,000 but he estimates he was still out of pocket by up to $30,000, without factoring in hours lost cleaning.
As the impact of climate change is felt at the local level, those most at risk are bearing the brunt, Georgina Woods, head of impact at the Climate Risk Group said.
"The risks of climate change are concentrated in certain places, and it underscores the need to have a nationwide and statewide framework for adaptation planning," she said.
Last year, Climate Risk Group along with the Climate Council published a map of the areas of Australia most at risk as climate change increases severe weather events and sea levels rise. Low lying areas of Windang and Lake Illawarra were most at risk in the Illawarra, due to their susceptibility to coastal inundation, while areas towards the escarpment such as Marshall Mount and Tongarra were in the red due to increased risk of bushfires.
Riverine flooding such as that experienced by Mr Fletcher in 2011 was most likely to impact Barrack Point.
While Wollongong and Albion Park Rail did not rate in the suburbs most at risk, the postcode-wide data did not account for individual properties that would likely go under, Ms Woods said.
"That doesn't mean that there's nobody whose home is at high or moderate risk," she said.
"It really ought not to be individual home-owners who have to carry the financial burden of systemic social failure to deal with the causes of climate change and now our responses to it."
Unlike the vast majority of developed nations, Australia lacks a national climate change adaptation plan and the national climate resilience and adaptation strategy removed emissions reductions and the National Recovery and Resilience Agency strategic direction avoided any mention of climate change.
"We can't expect the past to be a guide to the future any longer," Ms Woods said.
"You need to take account of the future projections of climate change and how much more intense these hazards are going to become."
After the catastrophic floods hit Lismore last year, the government has begun buying back flood-affected homes and a similar scheme has been proposed for Western Sydney, however at the same time thousands of homes are proposed to be built below the probable maximum flood level near the Hawkesbury-Nepean.
The insurance industry is calling on the government to consider heightened risks as part of the planning process.
"We want state governments to amend land use planning arrangements to include a mandatory requirement for planning approvals to consider property and community resilience to extreme weather, and to improve building codes so future homes are made more resilient," the Insurance Council spokesperson said.
A Shellharbour City Council spokesperson said a 2019 national update to rainfall models would be used in updated floodplain strategies for the Macquarie Rivulet, Horsley Creek and Elliott Lake/Little Lake.
"There have been no recent changes to Council held flood information for the Shellharbour local government area," the spokesperson said.
Having lived in Albion Park Rail all his life, as homes spread across the hills and valleys of Tullimbar and Calderwood, and densities increase in his suburb, Mr Fletcher said flooding events were becoming more severe with less water absorbed by the land.
"Now I'm paying the price," he said. "It's disappointing, but there's nothing you can do about it."
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