the flood emergency

from Cooroy Rag 23 March edition

by Cooroy Rag

Plan

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LiveLife Helping Our Community

As part of LiveLife Pharmacies goal of giving back to the Community, we are opening submissions to local Charity, Community and Support Groups to participate in our “LiveLife Community Support Program”.

Each group chosen to participate will be allocated a specific month and will receive funds donated by the local LiveLife Pharmacies.

To be a part of this exciting community initiative, please visit the LiveLife website www.livelifepharmacy.com to complete an online submission form or visit your local LiveLife Pharmacy

Tales from the front line of the flood emergency

PROFESSIONAL FIREFIGHTER AND RETIRED IRONWOMAN KIRSTY HOLMES SPENT A LOT OF HER SHIFT TIME IN FEBRUARY HELPING OUT IN OUR REGION. HER ACCOUNT OF THE CHALLENGES HER SWIFT WATER TEAM FACED IS BELOW.

ON February 23, I was on my usual B Shift team based at Maroochydore Fire Station when the heavy rain started.

Most of us at Maroochydore station are all Swift Water Rescue specialists.

During a flood event we team up in a specialist Swift Water Team with a ute and a trailer that carries the boat and all the swift water equipment to effect rescues in most conditions.

As this event was a long duration and relatively large scale event we had all Swift Water Rescue Technicians on deck as well as some deployed from North Queensland to ensure that we could service the coast as best we could in all emergency situations.

This then required personnel from Brisbane to come up and cover any staff shortages we had for our regular fire trucks to ensure we could cover the area for all the regular emergency situations, like fires and traffic accidents etc should they occur in addition to the flood related incidents.

Our rostered shifts are 2 days followed by 2 nights.

The entire 4 shifts we spent out on the road in all areas of the coast from Caloundra to Gympie.

The majority of our time was effecting rescues of patients that required medical attention, who were inaccessible by ambulance personnel.

Our team would determine the best access for these patients and cross the waterway in our craft and retrieve the patient and transport them to the waiting QAS, or alternatively we would transport QAS personnel to the patients if needed.

As you can imagine with the extent of the flood and the roads that were inaccessible, this sometimes proved to be a challenge. In some cases there was no possible way for us to reach some people.

Other times there would be people stranded in water clinging to trees after trying to unsuccessfully cross a flooded road.

On one occasion we had people ask us to help a stranded cow.

This turned out to not be a cow, but a “bull" and we swiftly worked out that this was out of our league and not in our job description!

Channel 7 managed to capture that! We had one little boy with appendicitis that not only got an ambulance ride, but also a fire truck ride and a boat ride on his way to hospital!

There was an extensive amount of rescue performed that we are still trying to collate.

Many of us were doing 20 hour shifts and coming home for a break only to find our own homes and neighbourhoods flooding and then having to try to mitigate any damage.

Just when we thought it may subside and give the water a chance to get away we would find ourselves again in absolutely torrential rain with no relief.

I have never seen such relentless rain for such a long period of time in my nearly 30 years on the coast.

It’s been very sad to see the extent of the losses that the Northern Rivers community has endured.

One of our team members went south on holidays soon after it cleared here and ended up stopping for three days in Lismore to help out.

It’s always great to come to the aid of someone in trouble and have some form of success in making someone's life better in the job we do, however, the real heroes are the volunteers, the mums and dads from the Gold Coast, the people not getting paid who spent a week straight working around the clock to help and coordinate rescue missions to those in desperate need. I’m sure there will be many stories that come out of the many heroes that contributed to saving the property and lives of their fellow neighbours.