Eugowra flood: Heroes spring into action to save neighbours
Probationary cop Rebekah O’Connor earned the title ‘Wonder Woman’ after rescuing Diane Garner from freezing Eugowra floodwaters. ‘It like a scene from a movie, but there was no Bruce Willis or Chris Hemsworth. Just me and Wonder Woman clinging on to an oleander tree,” said the 77-year-old.
NSW
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It was a flash flood that arrived with almost no warning, a “tsunami” that slammed into the tiny town of Eugowra.
At 6.14am on Monday, the SES issued a snap evacuation order for Eugowra — roughly midway between Parkes and Cowra — and its population of about 700.
The Lachlan River was rising faster than anyone had expected and low-lying areas along the Mandagery Creek were told to evacuate immediately.
But two massive waves, likened to an inland tsunami, raged toward the town, hitting areas that had never before seen a flood.
Locals were forced to cling to trees, power poles and rooftops as water surged through their homes, sweeping several away from their foundations.
Grandmother Diane Smith, 60, lost her life, and the body of 85-year-old Ljubisa “Les” Vugec has not been recovered.
The town was devastated by the freak flood and resembled a disaster site on Tuesday.
Volunteers from across the state arrived at the town to help with the clean-up.
Front lawns were covered in sodden and trashed furniture, clothes and belongings, while devastated locals sifted through what was left of their homes.
Out of this chaos came stories of ordinary men and women who put their lives on the line to save others during those desperate hours.
They are Eugowra’s flood angels.
WONDER WOMAN
Modest probationary constable Rebekah O’Connor has earned the title of “Wonder Woman” after rescuing 77-year-old Diane Garner from her flooding home.
They found a tree to cling to, as a car full of people, a shipping container and parts of a house washed by them.
“I kept saying to Rebekah: ‘Let me go and save yourself’,” Ms Garner said.
“She said: ‘No, I chose to be here, I’m just doing my job’. She didn’t let me go. Without her I would have died.”
The pair were winched from the freezing waters by helicopter several hours later.
Constable O’Connor’s partner Senior Constable Tim Rogers had to watch them helplessly from the roof of a nearby property, having himself completed multiple rescues.
The couple have shied away from media attention, insisting there are more worthy people in the town who deserve accolades for their bravery.
The state’s top cop Karen Webb clearly disagreed, flying into meet with the pair.
Sources close to the Commissioner said she was determined to meet with her troops on the ground, “give them a hug and say: ‘Great job’.”
The pair, who are said to be traumatised by the floods ordeal, have “touched” the Commissioner with their humility and devotion to the people they serve.
Meanwhile, Ms Garner hasn’t lost her sense of humour.
Her ordeal, she said, was “like a scene from a movie, but there was no Bruce Willis, no Chris Hemsworth and not even Hugh Jackman. It was me and Wonder Woman clinging on to an oleander tree”.
Ms Garner, who works at Canowindra High School, has lost everything in the floods, but said there was no way she was leaving her beloved community.
“Students and teachers came out here to help me and the canteen even sent food out. They were all just lovely and they didn’t have to do that,” she said.
Earlier this week Constable O’Connor was reunited with Ms Garner, who thanked the police officer for saving her life.
“I want to keep in touch with her. I wanted to give her a little something to say thank you,” she said.
Ms Webb, who was in Eugowra at the same time on Friday as NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, didn’t address the media, preferring to meet her officers and other residents who put their lives on the line to save others.
GUARDIAN ANGEL
Chelsea Davies shudders to think what would have been had she not made the split-second decision to hand her 19-month-old daughter to a friend.
Ms Davies was preparing her shed for the flood when she handed little Ruby to Jodie Greenhalgh, who lives around the corner.
The water had started to rise, so Ms Greenhalgh took Ruby home and got onto her roof with her own children.
“It was literally a wave of water that just came at us — it seems dramatic but that’s exactly what it was,” Ms Davies said.
By the time Ms Davies attempted to drive to Ms Greenhalgh’s home, the water was too deep and her ute started to float, forcing her to climb out of the window and swim toward the Greenhalgh home.
“Thank God I didn’t have Ruby because I don’t think I would have been able to swim to Jodie’s house with her in my arms,” she said.
She was quickly reunited with Ruby but the group was forced to wait hours in the scorching heat for a chopper to fly them to safety.
While little Ruby is still having nightmares after the traumatising ordeal, Ms Davies said she was grateful for Ms Greenhalgh and her family. “I’m okay, I’m just grateful we are still here.”
Ms Davies, Ruby and the Greenhalghs finally reunited on Friday, with tears flowing from both families.
“It really was so scary but we were there for each other, trying to stay calm, keep Ruby happy,” Ms Greenhalgh said.
“The main thing is everyone is OK, the things don’t matter.”
JOHN’S AMBULANCE
John Agustine, born and bred in Eugowra, leapt into action when the wall of water walloped his town.
The 32-year-old and his mate Pat Welch rescued an elderly and frail Rhonda Yell from her property. They loaded Ms Yell into an ambulance and tried to drive her to safety.
But the ambulance began to float and quickly filled with water.
Mr Agustine held Ms Yell in his arms, keeping her head above water as Mr Welch climbed out of the ambulance and onto the roof to open the back doors from the outside.
Mr Agustine guided the elderly woman through the raging current and into the back of a waiting fire truck, which took her to safety.
Mr Agustine met with the woman he saved later that afternoon.
“It’s just what you do,” he said. “If someone needs help, you help them.”
SNOW’S ARMY
Stephen Jones, known as “Snow”, thought nothing of rescuing more than 50 people with five other men.
Driving fire trucks across Eugowra, Snow and his team waded through the murky water to rescue the elderly, and children as young as two and their parents from homes and cars.
“We knew the water was coming, we knew it was going to be a decent flood, but no one on the other side of town bothered to prepare because the water has never reached that far before,” he said.
“It was a shock to everyone and it just came up so quickly.”
Not knowing what was happening to their families, Snow and his mates tied a rope to the back of the fire truck and used it to guide them in and out of properties, stopping to help every time they heard a scream for assistance.
Once the truck was full, with more than 25 people on board, the water kept rising.
Using the truck’s ladder, they helped everyone climb onto the roof of the pub and waited for the water to recede.
It wasn’t until he arrived at what he calls the “refugee camp” at Eugowra Showground that Snow was able to check in on his loved ones.
“As soon as I got there I saw my dad,” he said. “That was a good feeling.”
Despite Snow keeping dozens of people alive, he refused to accept the title of hero.
“It wasn’t just me, there were so many people out doing the same thing,” he said.
“It’s what we do in a tight-knit community.”
SHE’S NOT ANY OLD KAREN
As Karen Gilchrist helped friends pack up their belongings and lift them to higher ground, the water started to rise and she knew the situation was going to be a lot worse than anyone had anticipated.
“I raced home from the other side of town and we started to move any cars we could, parking them away from the floods,” she said.
“By then it was coming up quickly so I raced down to my elderly neighbours.”
The aged care worker helped Lance and Suzanne onto their roofs, sitting with them for hours and keeping them calm while they waited to be winched to safety.
“I had to hold Lance against the shed to stop him from falling into the water,” she said.
“They are a retired couple and they contribute so much to this community.
“It’s an elderly town so we have to look out for them. I was just worried about them.”
While many of her belongings were destroyed in the flood, Ms Gilchrist remained positive, saying it was a miracle more people weren’t killed or seriously injured.
“I think that comes down to everyone stepping in to help each other out,” she said.
“Everyone came together, it was beautiful.”
SES BOSS: ENDLESS FLOODS ARE GIVING US NIGHTMARES
The woman leading our flood response has revealed her “sleepless nights” as more lives are lost and houses go under.
SES Commissioner Carlene York said as well as the anguish of lives lost and property damaged, she was trying to keep exhausted volunteers going in the face of relentless flood chaos.
“There’s certainly nights where I don’t get much sleep,” Ms York said.
“I worry about the community’s safety because I don’t want anyone to lose their life.
“I’m not going to stop the property damage in floods, but you want to try and reduce it as much as you can or give people enough warning that they can try and save some of their possessions, particularly things that are emotionally important to them and make sure they can get out.
“I do worry about the safety of the volunteers … I worry about the criticism that they might get, that might be unfounded.
“It’s just this relentless confrontation of all these storms and floods – it is very concerning. It is exhausting. But it can’t be exhausting, because you’ve got to come back and you know if our volunteers didn’t do it, who would do it?”
Ms York said she had been speaking with volunteers in Forbes who, after rescuing their neighbours and spending hours sandbagging houses, go home to clean out their own flooded houses.
Ms York described the “sinking feeling” she gets when reading the weather forecast to see yet another flood on the way.
“I get it for a couple of reasons — one is for the community, the despair and distress and damage it’s going to cause. It’s not like fires — when the fire goes through, they do have some years to expect that it won’t burn again,” she said.
“Whereas now we’re getting repeat floods. Some of these areas out west have had six floods in eight weeks.
“So I get distressed in that case, because I look at the photos and the vision and I go out there as well.
“But also for my volunteers and our partner agencies about ‘here we go again, they’re going to work long hours, they’re going to have to go out and help the community’ and they tired and they volunteer because they’ve got other jobs or other commitments, giving up their time to come out. At the moment it’s just relentless.”
Ms York said despite the exhaustion, morale was still high, with volunteers remaining keen to get out there and help.
Bringing in international support from New Zealand and Singapore and other countries is one way she hopes to lighten the load for the 9000 volunteers across the state and give them a much-needed break before Christmas.
It’s the first time the SES has looked to overseas help in a flood disaster.
“It’s quite different to running a paid workforce where you know weeks out who’s available and you can cancel rest days, you can bring them in and add that extra resourcing.
“But we’re constantly going out to our volunteers now saying ‘what shifts can you do’ … but the morale at the moment and the keenness to come in and help the community and do their work is fantastic.”
When asked about criticism of the SES after the Lismore floods and outcry from the community in Eugowra who claimed the emergency response was lacking, Ms York said she would always defend her volunteers.
“I wouldn’t agree they were left without help in Eugowra because we have volunteers there and obviously we’ve got a Rural Fire Service, we have Fire and Rescue NSW.
“We have ambulances across all these towns and we try and place our resources where we think the risk is going to be.
“On this occasion, I heard that there was a local resident who’d lived in the town for 52 years and she had never seen the floods at that level.
“It was those severe thunderstorms that just gave that intense rain in a small area.”
The disastrous floods in the Central West have meant there certainly has been no celebration for Ms York marking three years in the job.
She was appointed Commissioner after a decorated career in NSW Police, including one of her career highlights, the capture of Australia’s most wanted man, Malcolm Naden.
Ms York was leading the task force that eventually brought down the murderer.
After facing media scrutiny daily during her time in NSW Police, Ms York didn’t expect to become a household name when she went across to the SES.
“It is a smaller agency, much smaller than police … I did not anticipate the floods and rain that we have because it was a time of drought and bushfires, so I came into this role not expecting to be thrust into the media.”
As for the future of the SES, in the wake of a review of the Lismore floods that recommended the agency be merged with the RFS, Ms York couldn’t say when or how the merger would happen.
But employing more paid staff in training and admin roles and taking that burden off volunteers is one way she hopes to improve things for the strained volunteer force.
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Originally published as Eugowra flood: Heroes spring into action to save neighbours
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