Ted Uebergang recounts February 2022 floods as volunteer firey

A Gympie rural fire service volunteer who helped run the flood recovery effort for the worst affected areas in Gympie, has recounted the horror he witnessed as the region’s worst flood in 120 years took hold.

Gympie rural fire service volunteer and incident controller Ted Uebergang has seen his fair share of natural disasters over the past two decades, but nothing could have prepared him for what he saw in February 2022.

Mr Uebergang spent 10 days straight working alongside other volunteer firefighters, the SES and even the army during the peak and the aftermath of the worst Gympie floods in more than a century.

He recounted the “carnage” he witnessed to The Gympie Times on Wednesday.

“In all the years I’ve been doing flood mitigation, I’ve never seen such devastation,” he said.

“Normally, it will go over the floors and it will go halfway up the walls, but this time it’s gone all the way over buildings.

The Mary River peaked at 22.96m, which flooded half of lower Mary St. Photo Supplied: 7NEWSBrisbane

“I’ve never seen it so bad.”

But on top of witnessing first-hand the aftermath and devastation, one particular job involving a woman who had faced the floods alone while her husband was in hospital left a lasting impression on him.

“She had gone through the flood on her own … all her memorabilia … all those treasures … were destroyed,” he said.

He described the woman as “absolutely spent”, who had no energy left for her destroyed possessions and simply wanted them gone.

“So the guys got alongside her and said ‘this is valuable to you, at the moment you don’t have your husband, you’re going through a tough time, don’t give up’,” he said.

Mr Uebergang worked tirelessly for a week and a half during the aftermath of the floods, helping with the mammoth clean-up effort in Gympie’s CBD and other affected areas.

He said between Monday, February 28, and Wednesday, March 2, 128 jobs in Gympie had been completed, and the team was steadily growing in numbers.

Rural fire volunteer Ted Uebergang said more than 128 jobs in Gympie were completed in 72 hours. Photo: Elizabeth Neil

“On Monday we had 45 firefighters on the ground … Friday we had over 120 (firefighters) on the ground,” he said.

The volunteers were originally based in a car park at the top of Reef St, Mr Uebergang said, but with the growing numbers quickly moved to a carpark in Jaycee Way, and then to the Pavilion at the Gympie Showgrounds with the SES and the army.

Only the soldiers lived out of the Pavilion however, but another volunteer from Mr Uebergang’s brigade, Bernadette Right, helped to feed all the volunteers using catering donated from local stores.

Five lives have been lost in Gympie region floodwaters so far this year, and thousands of residents evacuated.

At the time of publishing, clean up efforts in Gympie’s CBD are ongoing.