Cyclone Seroja: Terrifying cyclone taught communities the importance of resilience, trauma lingers 5 years on

With the five-year anniversary of cyclone Seroja having come and gone over the weekend, Morawa’s shire president believes it is an important time to reflect on the challenges overcome and lessons learnt. On Sunday, April 11, 2021, Seroja hit Kalbarri, Northampton, Mullewa, Morawa, Perenjori and Mingenew. Kalbarri suffered the worst of it, with 70 per cent of the town destroyed by the 170km/h winds of the category 3 weather system. Kalbarri residents described the night the cyclone made landfall as traumatic, labelling the weather a “storm of vengeance”. Locals, Melissa Finlay, Steve Wiseman and Jamie-lee Loffler had their lives turned upside down the night of Seroja — leaving them to deal with the trauma and aftermath of the destruction over the past five years. Inland communities were also hit hard by the terrifying storm, which caused severe infrastructure damage which took almost five years to rectify or fix. Morawa shire president Karen Chappell said, if anything, cyclone Seroja taught people the power of resilience. “Seroja was an absolute eye-opener for our community because it was very unexpected and not something we had ever experienced before to that level of damage,” she said. “The recovery was long for much of the community, which was in regard to the delay and shortage in tradesmen. However, I think from a resilience perspective many people learnt a great deal from it.” Cr Chappell said people in the affected towns learnt how to be better prepared and accept the fact cyclones could occur and cause severe damage in this part of the State. She said this was reflected in how Morawa prepared for cyclone Narelle, which like Geraldton and Kalbarri, had no impact from the storm. “People were more ready to accept that it was a possibility and prepared themselves. Whereas, when we had Seroja, no one truly believed we would get a cyclone,” Cr Chappell said. “The five years on from it, the community has become a lot more resilient in its understanding of cyclones and its preparation.” Melissa Finlay, owner of Finlay’s restaurant in Kalbarri, said Seroja was a life-changing event for her and her family, with talk the of the event still drawing goosebumps to her skin. The Finlays suffered severe damage to their business and home, with the roof of their home torn off above them as they huddled under a mattress. Despite being hit hard, Ms Finlay said the family had no choice but to “get on with it”, picking up the pieces of their ruined home on the Monday after, clearing the destruction at Finlay’s on Tuesday, before being up and running again on Thursday. Ms Finlay said they were very lucky the restaurant’s infrastructure and new brewery at the time were undamaged, meaning they could open to provide food for the SES volunteers. Kalbarri SES manager Steve Cable said the first night of cyclone Seroja was “pretty surreal”. He recalled seeing a lot of “shell-shocked” people walking around the next morning. Mr Cable agreed before Seroja there was a real disbelief a severe cyclone could hit and destroy towns in the Mid West. Another Kalbarri resident, Steve Wiseman, only returned home four years on from the cyclone, after the harrowing system left him standing among broken beams and rubble. “I was fortunate that I had the factory I could live in. Not really the nicest of places to livevbut I got used to it,” he said. He was confident in the structural integrity of his rebuilt home but worried that not all homes had been constructed to a high standard. “I have a pile of steel at my factory still lying on the floor that’s supposed to be in houses around town, and the builders never came to get it,” he said. Cr Chappell said the regions of the inner Mid West had been lucky in receiving Federal Government funding for building evacuation centres to be better prepared, yet there were still some instances when residents felt let down. “But the funding is something we need to appreciate and keep in mind. Of course, it took up to four years for a lot of our repairs to be done,” she said. “Everyone in the region had to be incredibly patient and trust that in the end, it would get sorted.”