Mackay SES volunteers return after Brisbane flood deployment

Often arriving days after people had requested help, our SES heroes worked about 12 hours a day to help relieved flood victims living in a chaotic mess.

A crew of SES volunteers from Mackay, Isaac and the Whitsundays have returned home after a gruelling five-day deployment to Southeast Queensland’s disaster zone.

Deputy local controller Sarah Lethbridge, speaking at the arrivals gate at Mackay Airport, said she was ready for some sleep.

“I think we’re all pretty knackered to be honest,” she said with a laugh.

Breakfast for the volunteers kicked off at about 5.30am and they would return to their hotel at 7.30pm.

“Once you get going, it’s pretty well non-stop,” she said.

“You’re basically given a suite of jobs to go to and then we just keep going until they are done.”

Mrs Lethbridge’s team, which specialises in working at heights, worked primarily on “roof jobs”.

“A lot of the people we visited, we were there four or five days after they put in the original request for assistance, so most people were really grateful to see us and just that sense of relief in a lot of cases,” she said.

“And a lot of the times, I think they were just really appreciative that we could talk them through what had happened and how the damage occurred.

“It is quite confronting in some places.

“A lot of the places we went to were in the lower areas where Brisbane had flooded.”

'Once you get going, it's pretty well non-stop,' says SES volunteer Sarah Lethbridge. Picture: Duncan Evans

Mrs Lethbridge said bringing a “human face” was the key to interacting with people suffering through a tragedy.

“Every situation is different and you’ve just got to treat everyone as unique,” she said.

“And you’ve just got to be there, it’s just that human face isn’t it?

“You’ve got to put yourself into that situation and try to understand how they are feeling.”

Mrs Lethbridge brings home with her a collection of startling images and memories.

“One of the tunnels was completely full of water,” she said.

“It just brings home the sheer volume of water that they had.

“There are lots of images like that.

“Just seeing streets with all the rubbish on the sides.

“It really doesn’t hit home until you are actually there and you see that.”

The scale of damage across Queensland and NSW has not yet been fully assessed, but Treasurer Josh Frydenberg estimates the bill could run into the billions.

In her regular working life, Mrs Lethbridge is an engineer with Mackay Regional Council and she noted she and her colleagues could not heed the call to service without the support of their employers.

The Central Region SES volunteer crew returned home from their Brisbane deployment at the weekend. The crew was made up of four members from Mackay, three from the Whitsundays and three from the Isaac region. Here they stand together at the arrivals terminal at Mackay Airport. Picture: Duncan Evans

“We really express our gratitude to the employers who release our members to go on these deployments,” she said.

When asked what propelled her to serve others, Mrs Lethbridge replied:

“You see what’s going on in Russia and all those kind of things and you go, ‘I can’t do anything there,’ and then you see the Brisbane floods and suddenly, ‘hang on, I can do something there’.

“It’s trying to get rid of that feeling of passive helplessness that you feel with everything that is happening in the world today.

“So from my our point of view, it’s just that little things I can do to help someone else.

“And I think a lot of the other people feel the same way.”