'Someone's in strife, you go to them'

IN THE gentle streets of Graceville alongside the surging floodwaters of the Brisbane River, residents are retrieving what they can.

IN THE gentle streets of Graceville alongside the surging floodwaters of the Brisbane River, residents are retrieving what they can.

It is a little before 9am, Wednesday. The sun is out. The rain has stopped. And many of those losing their homes are bearing up stoically, making ironic jokes and getting on with salvaging upstairs furniture and whitegoods before it is ruined like the stuff downstairs.

There is calm here, even as the waters deepen and spread, engulfing modern houses and old weatherboards alike on both sides of Graceville Avenue near the Riverside Shopping Centre.

I'm with Scott Richards, 39, and his mate, Sam Morley, in a small dinghy. We are loading it with the contents of the second storey of Scott's home.

The first storey is underwater. Scott is laconic. He knows that within hours the home he shares with his wife, Angela, and their two toddlers will be submerged.

"It's a hell of a way to treat the new kitchen," says Scott from the upstairs deck as he hands a leather sofa over the railing to steady hands in the dinghy. "At times like this you realise how much stuff you have that you don't even need."

He is smiling. His family is safe -- he moved them out on Tuesday. Angela and the kids are at her parents' home in Brookfield, further west, watching the TV footage of Brisbane's great flood. They are looking for their home on the telly among the hundreds of homes being filmed and broadcast.

A woman wades towards us, seeking urgent help. Details are sketchy but it seems an elderly man has been swept into the currents flooding a nearby street. The man could drown. "He's only just hanging on -- he needs rescuing quickly. There could be a young woman and a baby in danger as well," the woman says.

Scott hears and guns the outboard engine, guiding the dinghy over the floodwater above the tree-lined street. Days earlier, on this street, he was putting out the bins for collection. Now he's watching his house being engulfed as an old man in the submerged street around the corner fights the dirty current to stay alive.

He runs the dinghy to the river end of Graceville Avenue. A short distance away, the river has broken its banks and torrents are surging at dangerous speed, along with trees, boats that have broken their moorings, and tonnes of debris from countless multi-million-dollar homes upriver.

"Where is he?" Scott asks. "He must be close -- unless he's been swept into the river."

We know (but don't say it) that if the man has gone into the Brisbane River, he will almost certainly become another death statistic. The woman and child must also be in grave danger.

From the dinghy we call out to a young couple casually walking past on a strip of high ground, asking if they have seen him. No, they don't know where he is. They don't know about a woman and baby.

Scott turns the dinghy around and we head back to the source -- better information about where the man was last seen is vital. Louise Frendo, who lives in West End, where she expects her own unreachable home to be flooded, discovers the man is clinging to something in Verney Road East, the next street over. But the street can't be reached from the river end of Graceville Avenue. And the man needs help. Fast.

Sam Morley has another runabout with an outboard engine, still hooked to his four-wheel-drive, and he drives to where the man was last seen.

I can see the stricken man now. He looks exhausted.

Others have already gone in to attempt a water rescue but they cannot get out of the current.

A small crowd of onlookers urges a safe ending.

One of those who rushed in is Andrew Dillon. He had seen the man and swum out to him.

Another man, Jake, went in too. They were holding on together in the strengthening current.

Seeing their predicament, others plunged into the current. The rescuers included several men from Bayside Removals, a small business run by Steve Rae on the bayside of Brisbane, about a 30-minute drive from Graceville. Steve and his guys had decided to do what they could by offering their brawn and removalists' trucks to anyone who needed help getting their furniture out before it got wet. They had headed for low-lying Graceville and then heard about the man in strife.

They had the numbers and strength to lift him out. He has a name now. Adolfs Lacis, 69, is hauled out of the current and on to the roof of someone's carport, a metre above the current.

The engine on Sam's dinghy starts and dies, starts and dies again. He's with Louise as they try to get to the carport. Adolfs is lowered down and brought to safety. He is wet and in shock. He is shaking like a leaf. I give him a dry shirt and jeans from my car and he sits down on the bench of a bus stop to reflect. He says the young woman with the baby are friends. They are safe.

"These blokes who saved me are unbelievable," Adolfs says. "The current was much stronger than I thought -- it swept me off my feet. I couldn't touch the bottom, the water is deep. I was clinging to a post." Adolfs is thanking one of his rescuers, Andrew Dillon, who says: "He was drifting very quickly when we went in. I didn't do much."

Steve Rae, the removalist, who is already moving up the street to see if others need a free hand to get their furniture out, says: "We ran in and put a strap around the old digger to get him on the roof. He was not going to win against the current. He was losing strength when we got to them."

In the Brookfield home of his parents-in-law, Scott Richards, who has no insurance, remains philosophical about his losses. He was ready for a beer.

"Bugger the possessions. If someone is in strife, you go to them," he said.