Prime minister Scott Morrison says he talked to Zoey about funds for fire service but video shows him ignoring her and walking away after she starts asking questions

‘He turned his back on me’: Cobargo woman forced to shake PM’s hand lost everything in fires

The woman who refused to shake Scott Morrison’s hand when the prime minister made a whirlwind press tour of the fire-ravaged town of Cobargo says she has “lost everything I own”.

Footage of Morrison picking up and shaking the hand of pregnant Cobargo woman Zoey, and then walking away as she said “we need more help” made national headlines.

“I have lost everything I own,” Zoey said in a social media post, in which she shared the footage. “My house is burnt to the ground and the prime minister turned his back on me.”

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A Rural Fire Services (RFS) volunteer firefighter, who also refused to shake Morrison’s hand, also lost his house. Other locals heckled the PM, saying they had been ignored.

Speaking to reporters in Bairnsdale, Morrison said he did not turn his back on Zoey but “stood there with the same lady you’re referring to” and talked to her – contradicting both Zoey’s account and what is shown in footage of the interaction.

“We talked about what she was asking there, which was greater support for the firefighting effort in that part of New South Wales,” Morrison said. “So we talked about that.”

The reaction of Cobargo locals was “totally understandable”, says former Cobargo publican Roz Jessop.

Jessop’s voice shook as she listed the towns that had burned on the NSW south coast.

“In Cobargo the whole village is gone. Mogo is gone, a lot of Batemans Bay is gone,” she said. “We were good friends with Robert and Patrick [Salway, who died defending their family property near Cobargo], we have known them most of our lives.”

Jessop and her husband ran the Cobargo Hotel for years, before selling in 2001 and moving to Bournda, about 80km south towards Merimbula.

“I am absolutely gutted,” she said. “I don’t want to drive out there, I don’t want to see it – the only thing standing is the butchers, the chemist and the hotel. The school is gone. The church is gone – my god, my mum is buried out there. It’s just gone.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Workers erect fences in front of destroyed buildings in the main street of Cobargo, NSW. Photograph: Sean Davey/AAP

Locals in that region have been asking for additional firefighting capacity and hazard reduction burns for years, Jessop said. Fire authorities across Australia say the extended fire season has narrowed the window during which hazard reduction burns can safely take place.

“They asked for people to listen, and they did not listen,” Jessop said. “It [the hostile reception to Morrison’s visit] is understandable.”

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Bournda has not been blocked out in red in the RFS’s map of the predicted fire spread for Saturday, but it remains within the south coast evacuation area.

NSW RFS (@NSWRFS) Fire Spread Prediction for Sat 4 Jan 2020

Dangerous fires in Shoalhaven, South Coast, Snowy Mountains & areas surrounding Greater Sydney. You should not be in potential spread areas or potential ember attack areas on Saturday. #nswrfs #nswfires pic.twitter.com/Ry14FXgPR2

Police were knocking on doors in nearby Merimbula on Thursday telling tourists to get out. One local at Kalaru counted 1,200 cars an hour snaking their way out along the Tathra Road on Thursday, trying to get out before the return to extreme fire conditions on Saturday.

“It is just horrific down here, it really is,” Jessop said. “We don’t know what to do.”

Jessop evacuated to her daughter’s house at Merimbula and will spend Saturday at the evacuation centre at the bowling club. It’s next to the beach – if worst comes to worst, like so many people up and down the east coast of Australia, they will head to the water.

“Even the dog is worried – he won’t let me out of his sight,” she said.

Her husband, however, is staying to defend their home, on a two-acre block backing on to the national park. It’s a story repeated along the east coast: women and children evacuate, men stay to defend.

“I am worried, scared to death,” Jessop said. “My son, he wants to stay and help him, but I said, ‘No mate, you have got to go to Merimbula, you have got a young family, you have to go.’”