‘Water coming up so fast’: Dogs, pigs rescued as residents flee flooded homes
Brisbane residents have told of their escape from flooded homes, using kayaks or calling on help from swift water rescue teams to get out. Meanwhile, Howard Smith Wharves workers have described the dramatic moment they formed a human chain to save a man from the river.
QLD News
Don't miss out on the headlines from QLD News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Brisbane residents have told of their escape from flooded homes, using kayaks or calling on help from swift water rescue teams to get out.
Meanwhile, Howard Smith Wharves workers have described the dramatic moment they formed a human chain to save a man from the river.
A group of heroes have come to the rescue of a man trapped by debris after his houseboat flipped upstream.
Howard Smith Wharves workers were moving stock to higher ground when they saw the tragedy unfold at 8am Sunday morning.
One rescuer, Lucas Eckersley said the man in his 70s is lucky to have grabbed his life jacket in time before the houseboat flipped at Kangaroo Point.
“As we came closer we saw this elderly gentleman clinging onto one of the pontoons so then a tug boat was trying to rescue him,” Mr Eckersley said.
The man was unable to grip on to any of the flotation devices he was thrown and was getting swept towards Howard Smith Wharves.
“We kind of all rushed down to the ferry terminal and were just all standing there, not really knowing what to do,” Mr Eckersley said.
“A few of us just started yelling out ‘can anyone hear us’ and I kind of heard this voice just off to the left side of me.”
“He was in the water buried by a big bit of plastic and a whole bunch of other branches and pieces of debris.”
Thanks to the quick-thinking of the Howard Smith Wharves workers they formed a human chain with almost eight people to save the man.
“Luckily we managed to get him out in time because we had a whole bunch of other pontoons set towards us”.
When the Courier-Mail asked Mr Eckersley if he thought he had witnessed a death, he replied, “I honestly thought he had drowned”.
Everyone broke out in a big cheer and was relieved to see the man survived.
Aside from a few gashes on his head Mr Eckersley said the man was in a pretty good condition.
“He must have been in shock … He just kept saying he would love a beer right now”.
Meanwhile, Janet Brady was rescued from her Chelmer home by a QFES swift water rescue team on Monday.
“It just came up so quickly,” she said.
“It’s just underneath the house so hopefully it doesn’t come up higher.”
She thanked her rescuers.
“They’re all amazing,” she said.
In another rescue, Amy O’Hara kayaked to her West End home this morning to retrieve her family dog Pippa who rode out the floods with her dad.
Ms O’Hara said they had raised the Ryan St home after the 2011 floods but they acted quickly on Sunday morning, knowing the devastation they could be facing.
“My dad woke us all up really early on Sunday morning and said we had to get everything upstairs, so we did,” Ms O’Hara said.
“Water was coming up Hoogley St but it was also coming out of the stormwater drains outside our house.
“The water didn’t get inside until late Sunday.”
Water in the downstairs section of her house reached about 1m high and Ms O’Hara and her sister booked a hotel room for the night.
She returned this morning to check on Pippa and her dad who managed to stay dry on the second floor.
“She hadn’t gone to the toilet since the water rose because there’s no grass to go on,” Ms O’Hara said.
“I wanted to say hi to her and bring her back to go to the toilet.
“She was really stressed when we pulled up, trying to get onto the canoe, but she’s happy now to be out of the house.”
An SES crew has rescued a Brisbane family who say dodgy phone reception in their neighbourhood meant they didn’t know they would be stranded by major flood levels until hours after the flood warning was upgraded.
Tian Cheng said her family thought they would be safe on West End’s Orleigh St based on the forecast that the Brisbane River would peak at “moderate” flood levels.
“My signal came back on my phone after 11pm on Sunday night when the storm eased and that’s when I realised the warning had been upgraded,” Ms Cheng said.
“We didn’t get the alert.
“We had no power and the signal is so bad in the area that I couldn’t even launch apps on my phone or send messages.”
Ms Cheng said she was grateful for neighbours who had passed food and candles over the fence.
But she worried about the safety of her children including 10-month-old baby Mia being exposed to flood water which had filled the first floor of their house.
The family called for help on Monday and an SES crew came to their rescue about 4pm.
“I thought maybe we could be okay on the second floor for two or three days but we don’t know exactly when we would be able to get out,” Ms Cheng said
“I didn’t get much sleep because as soon as my signal came back I realised the seriousness of the situation and spent the night trying to organise a way out and accomodation.
“I was a bit panicked.”
The Cheng family thanked the SES crew and headed to a Kangaroo Point hotel with their dog Dudu.
In a separate incident, it was Rolly to the rescue for two Rosalie residents who had been stranded at their Bayswater St property without power since yesterday.
Alison and Lyndon Hill had been content to wait out the floods but their landlords who experienced the 2011 floods thought it best to pull them.
“So they knew what’s to come, they know that this is not just a few days. So we trust their experience,” Ms Hill said.
The water started rising quickly about 2am yesterday and the couple were “stranded without power” from about 3pm.
“We ate everything that we could from our fridge so we had a bit of a food party with a bit of red wine,” she said.
“We weren’t going to call the SES because we realised there’s people a lot worse off than we are at the moment. But yeah, we had a friend with a canoe who kindly offered to come out and like, do his own SES rescue for us.”
That was Rolly Ruhle who canoeed out to the Hills and brought them back to dry land.
Windsor resident Rachel Campbell said she was imagining the worst case scenario last night when she left her home to safety.
“It’s was so scary, we got evacuated at 7:30 by some rowing boats,” she said
“You just think of worst case scenario and I was just worried the whole time.”
But the silver lining for the long time resident was how the community was able to come together.
“Sometimes you feel the sense of community is lost so times like this really helps remind you to help your neighbour,” she said.
Meanwhile, around the corner David Weller and his wife Inga remained in their house all night with the water just reaching the bottom floor of their two storey home.
“It was pretty scary, we moved the cars right away,” she said.
“It’s definitely worse than the 2011 floods, we never expected it to get that high. We just didn’t know what to do.”
An Ashgrove family had to be rescued by police who were forced to kick in a backyard fence to save them from fast rising floodwaters.
Jamica Santos said she had never seen anything like it in 25 years of living next to Enoggera Creek on Acacia Drive.
“It was crazy it just kept rising, it wouldn’t stop,” she said.
“I was scared because of how quickly it was rising.”
In about two hours the creek rose up to about 5 feet outside her home.
Ms Santo said about 4.30pm police had to break palings in their back fence to evacuate them.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before, we just watching all the fences drift by,” she said.
“And not knowing when we were going to be rescued.”
“Now is just the clean up.”
Ms Santos said the 2011 floods only made it to the driveway.
A few doors down their neighbour Genevieve Kirkman also had to evacuate from waters that would topple her fence and “wrap a trampoline around a tree”.
“The creek burst and it just went to the entire top of the road,” she said.
“It ripped all the fencing, put the caravan on it’s side.”
Ms Kirkman said she only moved in in December.
“The water came straight up real quick.
To get out she waded through hip deep water with “a bag or two, because it just came up so fast.”
Video has also surfaced online of a herd of cows who had to fight through exhaustion in order to overcome floodwaters in the Brisbane storms.
Avalon Robinson has posted a video on Tik Tok of a number of cows who had to swim through floodwaters for seemingly hundreds of metres in order to save themselves.
Ms Robinson said during the video that the cows appeared to get tired as they struggled to swim against the current of the flood water.
The herd were urged on by a group of bystanders, with one yelling “come on cows, come on!”
The crows eventually made it to land and appeared extremely tired after the swim.
In a happy outcome, a pig is among the many who has had to be rescued.
Exhausted, alone and with flood water surrounding it, the pig had to be rescued from the roof of a property in Ipswich.
The pig was saved from a roof on Keith Street in Bundamba earlier today.
But this story had a happy ending as the pig was also pictured safe and sound back on some very green grass.
Read related topics:Weather
‘Took a hit to the head’: Pro bull rider rushed to hospital after serious fall
Australia’s current top-ranked bull rider was rushed to hospital with a head injury after coming off a bull at a professional event held in the Scenic Rim last night. WATCH THE VIDEO
Read more
Qld beaches lose shark nets as Cyclone Alfred approaches
Shark nets and drumlines have been removed from Queensland beaches as Cyclone Alfred approaches, prompting safety warnings and reigniting debate over the effectiveness of shark controls.
Read more