Brisbane floods: Hardest-hit victims return to homes, businesses
Story after story is emerging of families across southeast Queensland who have lost everything to the floods and are beginning to try to rebuild, as they salvage what they can and start the heartbreaking clean-up. THESE ARE THEIR STORIES
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Story after story is emerging of families across southeast Queensland who have lost everything to the floods and are beginning to try to rebuild, as they try to salvage what they can.
Just 11 years after the last big flood, Brisbane residents have been blindsided by another major event.
MUD ARMY 2.0: COUNCIL ISSUES CALL TO ACTION FOR CLEAN-UP VOLUNTEERS
As the worst-hit victims return to their sodden, muddy homes and businesses, these are their stories …
FEATURED SUBURBS: Corinda, Graceville, Hendra, Paddington, Rosalie Village, Windsor, West End
CORINDA
Brisbane’s community spirit is in full force, with local Corinda residents providing in-need neighbours with food and power.
Michaela Smerdon and Chiharu Komatsu have joined forces to help their lower-lying neighbours by providing essentials, like a phone charging station, candles and bread.
Camped out underneath a pop-up gazebo on Edmonston St, Ms Smerdon told The Courier-Mail she was one of the lucky ones, and was in a position to help her community.
“We were here in 2011 so this time we knew what we needed to do and how to prepare, and we knew we’d be above the flood water but many people weren’t going to be, so we knew how lucky we were,” she said.
“We knew we were the lucky ones, so when the flood waters came up we knew we had to start helping the people in the next street and the three or four streets after that who were completely trapped or who couldn’t get to the shops for food and didn’t have the capacity to charge their phones.
“They’ve lost everything, really, some of them have lost everything.”
Dozens of bread loaves, donated by a local Baptist church, sat on crates under the shade of a gazebo, while other bits and pieces- including condiments, bug spray and candles- had been donated by Ms Smerdon and other locals.
Ms Smerdon said residents that had access to the street had been coming back to drop off what they could and provide petrol for the generator.
Others who weren’t as fortunate to have access to the street had been delivered some food goods from the free makeshift vendor where possible.
Ms Smerdon said many of those popping by since she set up on Sunday simply wanted a chat.
“It’s pretty hard when your local store closes, especially for the elderly residents in our neighbourhood or those with dementia, to understand what’s happening or why their power is out,” she said.
“I’ve been trying to get by to help where I can. And some of our other locals including local restaurants have helped with food too.
“Anybody that comes by I’ll help … I’m just trying to feed people but others are helping out where they can with baked goods or ice too.”
CORINDA PART II
For most, spending days in a hot car with two dogs as flood waters continue to inundate your home and destroy your belongings just metres away would be almost unthinkable, but two Corinda locals who found themselves in that situation say there’s no point being upset over things they can’t control.
Siblings Gordon Lewin and Michelle Shepherd have spent the last few nights sleeping in their little blue hatchback, parked on the street nearby to their flooded Deniven St rented home.
Although on the outset the pair seem to be doing it tough - with umbrellas and towels used as makeshift curtains to keep the blaring afternoon sun out of the stationary car, parked a few dozen metres up the road from their fully submerged house - they’ve managed to find the silver linings.
“She’s safe, we’re safe, we’ll survive,” Mr Lewin said.
“You think we’re doing it tough? The people in the Ukraine, now that’s tough. You know, this is one week. We’ll be in a tough position for one week. And then we’ll be okay.”
The pair said the time will come to be angry over the situation, but for now, they will use that energy to look towards what happens next.
“You just can’t sit around and mope, thinking oh, poor me, poor us,” Ms Shepherd said, while Mr Lewin added: “That’s right, what a waste of energy that is. You can’t keep looking backwards, it’ll kill you.”
Sitting on a cushion perched on the backseat next to Mr Lewin on Tuesday were his two furry friends Jetti and Trixie.
Mr Lewin said the dogs would be lost without him, and says he too would be lost without the dogs.
It’s for that reason, he says, he made the decision to stay in the car until the water subsides.
“Me personally, I’m staying with my animals,” Mr Lewin said.
“They would fret without me, and I would possibly fret without them to tell you the truth. I’m an animal person and always have been, they’re what’s most important, it’s all about the animals. And somewhere else, if we were separated, I know my animals would be uncomfortable.”
The plan moving forward, Mr Lewin said, was never to look back.
“I hope possibly tomorrow we’ll enter the house and rescue what we can,” he said.
“We’ll load up what are can retrieve and drive away, onto our new life, and we won’t look behind us.”
GRACEVILLE
Graceville residents Alexandra and Trent McElroy say they’re “a bit emotional”, however feel “relatively lucky” after returning to their flooded Graceville Ave home to start cleaning early Tuesday morning.
The couple, who have lived at the two storey property for about five years, say the water climbed about 1m their house, and was in stark comparison to the 2011 floods, where the water height lapped under where the second storey floorboards sit now.
“We realised the water would probably start coming up into the house, and we’d lost power … we were worried if we didn’t go when we did, we wouldn’t get out,” Mrs McElroy said.
Mr McElroy said returning to his house today was confronting.
“It was a bit confronting,” he said.
“We’ve never been through a flood before. And seeing all this for ourselves, in our own house, yeah- confronting.”
The couple said most of what was lost or damaged by flood waters could be replaced or restored, however it was a box of childhood memories that left Ms McElroy the most upset.
“I had this big box that mum had saved of things like year books and dolls and that sort of stuff, we put it somewhere we thought it would be safe, because we weren’t predicting it to be as high,” she said.
“I mean, most of the stuff we aren’t that worried about, it’s just, yeah, that childhood stuff.”
The couple were on Tuesday morning without power and unable to use pressure washers to clean their home, however were using shovels and a hose to wash off what they could.
GRACEVILLE, PART II
Mary and Michael Johnston have seen three major floods inundate their homes, but this time, the clean up was made easier thanks to the help of their grandchildren.
Mr and Mrs Johnston, who are both turning 80 this year, have lived at their Graceville home for the last 41-years.
The pair had lived in the same house in the 2011 floods, and down the road for the 1974 floods.
They say this time round they’ve fared relatively okay in comparison, but it’s was the help of their two grandsons and the boy’s girlfriends that had made all the difference.
“They’re all chipping in, they’ve done a wonderful job,” Mrs Johnston said.
“All the grandchildren have been in contact but Jaiden and Selby are the lucky ones who are here to help.”
Brothers Jaiden and Selby Johnston-Bates, and their girlfriends Tessa Davidson and Grace Condon had spent Tuesday shovelling and sweeping mud out of the home.
They removed destroyed furniture, including a mattress, a lounge suit, a fridge and a television and placed it into one pile, while other items that could be salvaged were hosed off on the roadside.
Mrs Johnston said although some things had to be discarded, her and Mr Johnston had copped much more damage in prior floods.
“It’s much better this time than the last time (2011) because last time it went two inches under our top floor,” Mrs Johnston told The Courier-Mail while sitting on her husband’s walker inside the muddied bottom level of their home.
“And well 1974 was in a different house and that went over the roof.”
The pair had stayed inside their home as water made its way underneath the door on Saturday, with the couple cautiously peering over the balustrade from the top of the internal stairs to watch the water rise.
“Michael has the electric chair for the stairs and because we have no power he’s stuck up there- forever,” Mrs Johnston joked.
“We decided we’d prefer to stay. We had lights and our oven worked and our stove top, but as of the middle of the night we don’t have power anymore. But we’d really prefer to stay in our own bed with all Michael’s medications and things.”
Selby said it was important he and his brother came to help his grandparents- despite the brother’s own house being inundated by water at Rocklea.
“Mary was in good spirits when we got here though, as best as she could be I suppose,” Selby said.
“But grandpa’s stamp collection got ruined, and his favourite couch too which is a bit of a bummer, he used to sit on it to watch TV, but that can be replaced I suppose.
“But they’re safe and they are in good spirits.”
HENDRA
Paralympian and disability advocate Karni Liddell came home from Mackay to find her Brisbane home underwater, with the greatest loss her electric wheelchair and expensive electric bed.
The single mum of young son Kai said she was “beyond devastated and in shock”.
In a heartfelt video, a tearful Ms Liddell said “all her life is currently being thrown out or dried out”.
A friend has started a GoFundMe account to help the Queensland NDIS ambassador.
Nadine Lewis said the loss of Ms Liddell’s power-assisted wheelchair and bed was a huge blow.
“These things are vital to her mobility and are a massive loss to take.”
“Let’s give back to my beautiful friend, the one who gives back every day with her work.”
Chef Jerome Dalton is also devastated.
Mr Dalton, who caters to Brisbane’s elite, was just about to open a charity bakery in Newmarket, “a beautiful space for kids with disabilities to cook and enjoy”, but it got washed away.
“Incredible amounts of energy went into building this new bake house then on Sunday night it was all destroyed,” he said.
“We watched the security footage as the water came up and literally washed away all the hard work, leaving nothing but mud and tears.”
Mr Dalton said while The Baking Bunch in Finsbury Street was now clean, every fridge, freezer and oven needed to be replaced. He said donations could be made via www.thebakingbunch.com
PADDINGTON
Devastated Paddington residents have returned to assess the damage after floodwaters inundated their homes.
Elizabeth St resident Kesena Brady was in Tasmania as the Brisbane River began to rise around her Paddington home.
“I was on top of a mountain in Tasmania with no reception, and I had all these messages telling me what was happening,” she said.
Ms Brady managed to get back to Brisbane on Monday and returned to her home on Tuesday where about a metre of floodwaters had inundated the bottom floor.
“There were some photo albums in a box on the bottom shelf and water went through those but dad is busy pulling all the photos out and trying to dry them,” she said.
“Overall we feel pretty lucky.
“I lived around the corner on Baroona Rd during the 2011 flood and the water was all the way through the house, so it could be worse.”
Her daughter Seoro Brady was at home with her grandparents as the water began rising on Sunday morning.
“It came up really, really quickly,” she said.
“We ended up leaving Sunday afternoon and it was thigh-deep.”
Further up the street, Alice Sarolis was busy cleaning out the garage of her apartment.
“We’re lucky because we live on the top floor so the water only came into (the garage),” she said.
“We tried to move as much as we could up higher but we had to leave some stuff.
“Now it’s just the smell and the clean up to deal with.”
Ms Sarolis said she and her partner were the only ones in their unit complex who stayed during the flooding and said the water had risen faster than she expected.
“It happened to quickly,” she said.
“We have no power so we’ve been having cold showers but it’s not so bad, it could be worse.”
ROSALIE VILLAGE
Brisbane’s Mud Army is already out in full force at Rosalie Village where dozens of volunteers have rolled up their sleeves to help begin the massive clean-up.
Jessika Brigginshaw and her sons Kruze, 5, and Tyler, 8, were helping with the massive clean-up at Rosalie.
Ms Brigginshaw, the sister of Broncos captain Ali Brigginshaw, owns a beauty business Be Indulged on Nash St.
She said the water stopped less than one centimetre from the top step of her business.
“It’s been such a rollercoaster,” she said.
“We’re so lucky and we’ve just been doing everything we can to help everyone who was hit.”
Ms Brigginshaw and other volunteers were working their way from shop to shop along Nash Street helping heartbroken business owners clean out the mud and debris.
“I think we’re all running on adrenaline,” she said.
“We’re all just doing whatever we can to support each other.
“A lot of us have had a really difficult time with Covid, the beauty industry was hit really hard, and now this has happened.”
Naomi Bartlett is one of the owners of Rosalie Village Pharmacy, and said she had been overwhelmed by the support of friends, staff and family who have arrived to help.
Inches of water flooded through the pharmacy but Ms Bartlett said sandbagging had helped save the shop from the worst of the flooding.
“We had moved up all the stock from about a metre down because it was just so hard to predict how high the water would get,” she said.
“We prepared for the worst-case scenario but now it will be a big job cleaning up and restocking the shop.”
Ms Bartlett said her husband began sandbagging the pharmacy from 3am on Sunday when water started creeping up the street.
“We could just hear it pouring with rain so he started early in the morning, it’s made a big difference,” she said.
“Sunday morning we had heaps of family and friends come out and everyone gave us a hand moving stock and fridges and computers off the floor.”
As the water began to recede on Tuesday, dozens of people arrived to help get the pharmacy back on its feet.
“We’ve got staff in here today and friends and family, lots of volunteers,” Ms Bartlett said.
“We’ve got lots of help to get back up and running.”
Despite the massive clean-up and having no power, Ms Bartlett said they would still do their best to fill scripts for customers.
“No power makes things tricky but we will dispense for customers that need their scripts,” she said.
“We’ll do it old-school.
“We’re not expecting heaps of customers but we know the people that come down need their medicine and we’ll do what we can to help.”
Tony Frangos said it was heartbreaking to see the damage caused to his Rosalie dry cleaning business on Tuesday morning.
Mr Frangos, who owns See Dry Cleaners, said more than a foot of water had inundated the business, which he has owned for about eight years.
“I was here from about 2 on Sunday morning just moving things in the event it did get worse,” he said.
“From about 4am I started seeing the water at the corner building up and every hour I saw it just kept rising and rising.
“I started getting really worried.”
By 10am Monday morning water was lapping at the front door.
“That was enough for me, I left then, I didn’t want to see it,” Mr Frangos said.
“I never thought I’d see it like this.”
Mr Frangos said he hoped heavy equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars which had been on the ground floor could be salvaged.
“It’s depressing because we have a business to run and this is our livelihood,” he said.
“We will be closed for a week maybe more.
“It’s heartbreaking but what can you do.”
Mr Frangos said he managed to save all the clothes before the water impacted the business.
“The clothing was the priority,” he said.
He said the entire community had banded together to help both before and after the water rose.
“The community has been fantastic,” he said.
“At 3am Ray from the deli was delivering sandbags and we all got together and helped the whole street prepare.”
He said people had already been down offering to help as soon as the floodwaters began to recede.
“Today has been great, we’ve already had people come to help clean up,” he said.
“We’re very fortunate.”
WINDSOR
A Sunshine Coast family who lost half of their two-storey house to devastating floodwaters have begun adding up the thousands of dollars worth of damage and salvaging what little they can.
Murray Thomas, is in the process of clearing out his Blackmore street home in Windsor after it was inundated by flood waters on Saturday.
He said flood waters reached shoulder height inside their home by the time he, his wife and two young children were evacuated on Saturday night.
“It got quite high, up to shoulder level in the house. We evacuated around 6pm, waded through the water and got out,” Mr Thomas said.
“This house wasn’t flooded in 20111, same with the neighbours, so it was a big surprise.”
Mr Thomas returned home on Tuesday to start clearing out the wreckage, farewelling all of his major electronic white goods.
“I’m getting all the crap out onto the road so we can start hosing stuff down but the problem is it came up the sewer as well, so I don’t know what can be salvaged,” he said.
“I got a TV and speakers and things like that upstairs but lost the downstairs washing machines, dryer, freezer, camping gear, everything.”
But that’s not the worst of their problems, with extensive water damage to their house and their electricity cut-off, the Thomas’s will be forced to find a temporary home.
“We’re going to have to find a place to live, we don’t have power because it went over the meter box. Some of the panelling on the side of the house is all buckled. There’s going to be a fair bit of electrical work to do, I’m sure there’s water in the walls,” Mr Thomas said.
“I reckon it’s going to be months until we get tradies in to repair the place because of how many places went under. It’s a waiting game.”
For now, Mr Thomas is focusing on getting his kids back to school, and finding their baby teeth.
“We’ll be all right for a little while, it’s just getting the kids back to school tomorrow now,” he said.
“We managed to get the wedding photo albums out but my wife had a box full of trinkets from the kids when they were babies, like a first clip of hair or tooth, and that all went under. She’s very disappointed about that, so I’ll be searching for that later.”
Despite losing most of their possessions, the Thomas’s are in relatively good spirits, banding together with their fellow neighbours to begin the huge clean up process.
“We’ve been helping the guys out at the croquet club, who couldn’t close their door because it all swelled up. We’re all working together. I’ve got lots of friends who have come down to help out as well,” Mr Thomas said.
“We got the family out, everyone’s safe, we’re just going to have to go through the process now.”
WINDSOR, PART II
There were plenty of hands at work at Jeni Dell’s Bowen St home as her kids and husband all chipped in on Tuesday morning to clean up the mess left over from the floods.
“We worked hard yesterday we had all these people cleaning and sweeping all the mud out, and then the tide came in this morning and it just washed it all back in,” she said.
But the family pushed through and continued the clean this morning as they swept out excess mud from their downstairs room.
Ruined couches, pool tables and soaking wet linen sat out to dry with Ms Dell saying she did what she could the night it happened, but the flood was too quick.
“We just watched it rise and rise, way higher than 2011 floods. We thought we had stacked everything high enough but it went so much higher than we expected,” she said.
The family worked together all morning in the heat, trying to dry and pull out as much as they could from the house.
And as a due reward for their hard work, a truck came to deliver free Grill’d burgers for a filling lunch.
Mario Sultana, from the Place Newmarket, spent his morning driving up and down Bowen St handing out free burgers to hardworking residents.
“We live in the area and we’re just trying to do what we can to help,” he said.
WINDSOR, PART III
In Windsor, residents have banded together to start the clean up after floods inundated most of the suburb.
At Wendy Horgan’s Bowen St home, friends came out to lend a helping hand before they started the clean up at Windsor Bowls Club, where they’re all active members.
“We’ve been here 40 odd years and it’s never been this bad. It was just so quick, we grabbed what we could and stayed upstairs,” Ms Horgan said.
The bottom level of the two-storey home was completely wiped out including ruined couches, fridges, beds and cars.
While the precious memories in their photo albums were salvaged, the pages of the books had already started sticking together due to the rain.
As a pensioner, Ms Horgan said it near impossible to afford insurance in their area.
“We can’t insure it either because we’re in a flood area so the cost is 10 per cent of the total cost of your house. In a decade you could pay off your entire house in insurance,” she said.
The lack of warning was frustrating to Ms Horgan and her husband Arthur as she said just two weeks prior, the house was looking “perfect”.
“We just did a fresh cost of paint and the garden bed looked amazing. Everything was just how we wanted it, and now it just all washed out,” she said.
WINDSOR, PART IV
When Morgan Liu and Tali Scott bought their Cullen Street home last year in Windsor, they didn’t expect to be getting rescued six months later from rising flood waters.
The couple and their small Labradoodle were ferried out over their highset balcony after the water started to rise over the weekend.
“It could be worse, we’re lucky that it didn’t reach our second level,” Ms Lui said.
They stuck it out for the majority of the peak including Friday night and Saturday night before SES crews came to their rescue on Sunday after the couple were unsure how much higher it would get.
Similarly, three girls who just moved in around the corner less than a month ago in Victoria St swam out of their home when the flood waters reached over a metre on their second level.
Windsor resident Jactina Corkeron said the girls didn’t realise how high the water would rise and decided to leave when they saw their neighbours evacuating.
“We had to get out by wading through the flood waters. We had the cat on the surfboard and basically just had to float it all the way up the street,” she said.
Days after the peak of the flood, the girls returned on Tuesday to clean out the remaining items of their home and hopefully salvage some of their items.
“We’re staying in a hotel at the moment but we just don’t really have many things left,” she said.
WEST END
The muddy clean-up has already begun for some Brisbane residents whose homes were swamped in yesterday and today’s high tides.
Water at the intersection of Hoogley and Ryan St, one of West End’s worst affected, has receded where people were yesterday paddling kayaks to their houses.
Residents started to pull their muddy furniture from their house and began to the clean up while the sun shone on Brisbane on Tuesday.
Ryan St property owner Jan Langford is bracing himself for the scenes he will find tomorrow morning when he expects he will finally have access to his two-storey house.
Mr Langford and his wife Lee yesterday paddled to their home and estimated the water inside had reached almost two metres.
They owned the property in the 2011 floods and are optimistic that the fallout this year won’t be quite as bad.
“We’re expecting just everything to be covered in mud,” Mr Langford said.
“If the water has reached the ceiling like last time, the ceiling may have collapsed in, so it’s going to be pretty nasty.
“Our tenants told us there was a few items of furniture that they weren’t able to get upstairs too.”
Based on his experience in the 2011 floods, Mr Langford said power likely wouldn’t return to some homes on his street for a couple of weeks.
“Some of them won’t be able to have power until new meters are installed and electrical points and switches replaced,” he said.
Residents without power are accessing powerpoints and food at various hubs around West End including West End Community House and a community room at Montague Markets.
Fareshare program manager Madi Buik was driving around West End delivering nutritious meals from the charity to community hubs.
She said many people who were seeking food and power still had dry homes but no electricity.
“There is still going to be a few tough days ahead for those people,” Ms Buik said.
People experiencing homelessness in Brisbane can usually turn to Emmanuel City Mission in South Brisbane for food and resources.
The outreach service, previously called Blind Eye, is out of action due to the impacts of flooding so other services in the area are sharing the load.
Emmanuel City Mission on Tuesday posted that it should be back up and running on Wednesday, beginning with a breakfast at 8am.
WEST END PART II
His father’s ashes were the first thing Mark Wheelhouse grabbed as water seeped into his West End home on Sunday morning.
He was devastated to witness the fallout on Tuesday when the water on his first floor finally receded.
The floor was caked in mud and a musty odour filled his home where furniture floated around for two days.
“I feel terrible that I have to go and get more stuff to make my house look like how it did it again,” Mr Wheelhouse said.
“It’s been ruined.
“I’m really sad that this has happened to me and my neighbours but we all look after each other.”
Mr Wheelhouse and his neighbours began to hose down their walls on Tuesday afternoon and gather items which were destroyed.
WEST END PART III
Freda Ioannidis’ West End home has filled with water in 1974, 2011 and now 2022.
And it’s been no less devastating each time.
The Gray St resident wiped away tears as she caught a glimpse of her ground floor for the first time on Tuesday afternoon.
Her adult children who live nearby helped lift out her furniture at the weekend but Ms Ioannidis said there was still a huge amount of work ahead for her.
“I don’t think I can cope with flooding anymore, I’m getting too old,” she said.
“I’m sad that I’ve lost my gardens because that’s great therapy.
“But the saddest thing is the lives we have lost and the people who have gone missing.”
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