No mercy for Grantham as wall of water forces residents to flee

THE residents of Grantham were caught totally unawares.

A house lies in ruins in Grantham after flash floods devastated the region. Picture: ABC News

THE residents of Grantham were caught totally unawares.

Cars, trucks, caravans, water tanks, houses and livestock were mercilessly smashed by the wall of water and spirited away in the rushing water which in places was more than 100m wide.

Scores of people took to rooftops and by dark last night more than 40 had been rescued by helicopter and boat.

Emergency services personnel worked through the night and by morning the township had been evacuated. Medicos reported elderly people suffering heart attacks and people panicking because family members and friends were missing.

This morning Grantham was a ghost town resembling a bombed village. Houses were forced off stumps, many were twisted piles of roofing iron and timber.

On one typical Queenslander, on stumps almost 3m high, the debris was piled up on the verandah, attesting to the height of the water at its most violent.

The front steps had been torn off and windows just did not exist.

Refuges have been set up in nearby Helidon on the Brisbane/Toowoomba highway and at Gatton, where more than 60 stranded motorists and locals leaving low-lying homes on creek banks spent the night.

A steady stream of new people was arriving this morning, with many coming from Brisbane in search of family members.

Stranded on the highway last night in a 10km-long line of cars and semi-trailers was one distraught Brisbane man who was desperate to get to Withcott just 10km up the road because his 92-year-old father-in-law was stranded and uncontactable.

But like hundreds of other people, nobody could tell him whether the man was safe, and they were not answering the telephone.

He has to wait until some time today to get to the township to find out.