Hell for town not finished grieving

IN flooded Grantham, Danny McGuire was taking a bulldozer ride through hell.

Danny McGuire

IN flooded Grantham, Danny McGuire was taking a bulldozer ride through hell.

"Not again," he said as he steered the huge machine through a brown lake of floodwater that had engulfed the broken town in Queensland's Lockyer Valley.

Twelve people died here in 2011, including Mr McGuire's wife and two of their three children.

Like so many others in the close-knit community, he cannot believe flooding has returned so soon, and with such devastating force.

"I still haven't grieved for the first one yet," he said.

"I'll end up in a screaming heap, I know."

Grantham and its scenic surrounds are again in the firing line after ex-Cyclone Oswald dumped an estimated 600mm of rain on the valley, west of Brisbane.

Mayor Steve Jones said some creeks recorded flood levels 1m higher than in 2011, isolating Grantham and nearby Laidley. "We've got a situation that's developed . . . it's probably far worse than we thought," Mr Jones said yesterday. "We're just thankful people are trying to keep themselves safe and are doing the sensible thing."

On January 10, 2011, Mr McGuire was rescuing fellow Grantham residents in a fire truck, as part of the rural fire service, when the infamous "wall of water" smashed through the town.

By the time he picked up his own family, the water was dangerously high. It trapped them in the truck: his wife, Llync-Chiann Clarke, and two of the little ones perished. Mr McGuire and his son Zachary, now 9, managed to scramble from the cabin and cling to trees for eight harrowing hours. Zach is now so protective of his father he begged him not to take the bulldozer further than the railway skirting town, but Mr McGuire has a get-amongst-it streak. He couldn't help sending the dozer into the centre of town yesterday, shifting fallen trees, searching for stranded townspeople as floods poured through houses and shopfronts painstakingly restored in a two-year town recovery effort.

Perched on the front of Mr McGuire's bulldozer was Marty Warburton, the petrol station owner who became a reluctant "face" of the 2011 flood. He was wearing green overalls and gumboots.

We ploughed past his garage where floodwater had just swept through, destroying everything inside: freezers, counters, foods, goods. His garage was covered in green and brown slime. On his face, as he stared at his garage, was a look so distant he looked like a ghost, like the walking dead.

"He's not real good," Mr McGuire said, looking at his friend through the muddy windscreen.

Mr McGuire points to his new rental home up in the "new estate" on a hill above Grantham, established for residents who lost everything in the 2011 flood. The rest of the Grantham residents were up that way, cut off from both sides by the rising floodwater

"That's where Zach is," he said. "We're both still going to counsellors full-time. So in the last two days he's gone back two years. He won't let me out of his sight.

"At least it wasn't a wall of water this time. But if you look at the creeks, the water is three times deeper and twice as wide. It's a hell of a lot of water."

This flood was a different monstrosity. Every Grantham resident who had come down to view the flooding described the past two days as the "last kick in the teeth". It was a gut punch, a cruel joke.

Mr McGuire drove the bulldozer out of the floodwater, stopped at the long-condemned house he used to share with his wife and kids, a photograph of whom has been strung up outside.

His old neighbours, Ken and Fran Arndt, 74 and 66, emerged from their home, disoriented and relieved. They spent the 2011 flood clinging to trees.

Neighbour Linda Godley had spent the night sleeping in her horse stables. "Got to get that hose out all over again," Ms Godley said. "Might as well. I'm cut off. Once you're in, you're in."

She slapped her thighs. "Yep, didn't see this coming again. I'm really tired of it. We'd just gotten everything nice. We'd finished a garden on Boxing Day. We've just had enough. But I can't move. I've got a mortgage. And now it's happened again, we've got Buckley's chance of selling it.

"First you think, if it doesn't happen again for 10 years, people might forget. But you're never gonna sell it now."

Mr Warburton wandered in his gumboots back towards his garage, wading into water up to his waist. "I could take you to five families around here who are still living in sheds," he said.

He shook his head and his upper lip trembled.

"Honestly, we shouldn't be put in this position. We got wiped off the face of the map here. People shouldn't be left in this position. They've paid their dues."