After the flood: a ‘baptism of fire’ for Charleville’s SES crew

The SES ran a mass rescue operation while their HQ filled with water. 30 years later, George Donohue remembers how locals pulled together to save the town.

A group of people on top of the Victoria Hotel kitchen, waiting for a rescue helicopter. Charleville 1990 flood.

“That was a baptism of fire, it was.”

In April of 1990, George Donohue and the volunteers of the Charleville SES were preparing for the worst, but even they couldn’t predict the ferocity of the floodwaters coming downstream to Charleville.

A month of heavy rain had created a recipe for disaster: rivers had been running full for months, and there was a lot more water with nowhere to go, except over the banks.

With the flood level rising in town, Mr Donohue and the SES crew found themselves running a disaster operation with water coming up to their knees inside their base.

They were sheltering people in a neighbouring house, which happened to be on high stumps, but soon it too would succumb to the floodwaters, and Mr Donohue said they had to find a new solution.

“By the midday on that Saturday (April 21) we had 96 people in the house and 40 in the SES shed, while we were trying to do radio operations and run rescues in about 60cm of water,” he said.

“It was about then that the Army choppers arrived, but before that there were just two local blokes with single-seat choppers trying to rescue people.

“When the choppers did come, had all these people in the house and the SES shed and we thought ‘how will we get them down?’

“But we were only about 180 yards from what was the Victoria Hotel Motel – it was a low building with a flat roof and now power lines around, so we decided to get them there.”

Tying guide ropes from the buildings, to telephone poles, and finally to the Victoria Hotel, the SES crew managed to send every person up to the roof of the pub, where they would be flown.

The volunteers took people through chest-deep water, wading to the pub and climbing ladders – some carrying elderly residents – but Mr Donohue said they were lucky it was a success.

“The choppers came wave after wave, and finally I think we lifted all told 700 people off the Victoria Hotel Motel roof during that Saturday afternoon,” he said.

“At one stage we had to stop, because we thought the roof was going to give way, there were that many people on it.

“Luckily we did, because we later found out the building was badly damaged.”

While the Charleville SES faced their biggest challenge on that day, they were not going it alone.

A couple cling to a helicopter's rescue lifeline. Charleville 1990 flood.

Private residents came out not only in their aircraft, but with their boats to help their neighbours, and Mr Donohue said to this day he is glad they did.

“We did rescues on one boat, and not knowing it at the time, down the southern end of Charleville there was another boat run by two young brothers who went around rescuing people; thank heavens they did,” he said.

“Another young family from near the scout hall was rescuing people too.

“(At its peak) there was a current in the river that was clocked at 40km/h, and those young boys were still on the south side of Charleville trying to help out along with George Balsillie, who was rescuing people in his boat.”

Facing an unrelenting torrent of floodwaters is, to this day, the most difficult rescue operation the Charleville SES has ever faced, according to Mr Donohue.

But he said it also united the rescue volunteers, and everyone who faced the flood.

“That was a baptism of fire, that was,” he said.

“The SES was only reasonably new, we probably had about 20 volunteers at that time and were just getting our base together, but that number didn’t matter.

“There was that many people who came out of the woodwork to help, it was just unreal.”

This week, Charleville was set to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the 1990 flood - the highest in the town’s history.

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