The Torrent: A True Story of Heroism and Survival

by Amanda Gearing

Overview

Six years on from Queensland’s tragic ‘inland tsunami’, this new edition of The Torrent reconnects with the survivors at the heart of the catastrophe. On January 10, 2011, after weeks of heavy rain and as floodwaters began to overwhelm much of southeast Queensland, a ‘wall of water’ hit Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley. The Torrent tells the extraordinary stories of survival and loss that emerged from that terrible day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780702259524
Publisher:	University of Queensland Press
Publication date:	02/01/2017
Edition description:	Revised and updated edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Amanda Gearing is a Walkley Award-winning investigative journalist. She worked for the Courier-Mail from 1997-2007 based in Toowoomba before becoming a freelance print and radio journalist for media outlets including The Australian and ABC Radio National. Amanda completed a Master of Arts (Research) in 2012 and a PhD in global investigative journalism in 2016, both at Queensland University of Technology.

Read an Excerpt

The Torrent

A True Story of Heroism and Survival

---

By Amanda Gearing

University of Queensland Press

Copyright © 2017 Amanda Gearing
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7022-5952-4

---

CHAPTER 1

From drought to flood

'Love, how are we going to pay the rent this week?'

* * *

'The front steps are gone!' Marie yelled. Her husband Peter hurried up the hall just in time to see the front staircase of their highset house floating down the main street. Muddy, churning water raged past, three metres deep and rising fast. Within seconds, jets of water began spurting up through knot-holes in the floor and between the floorboards. Logs crashed against the timber walls. The house was shaking. They needed help and they needed it fast.

Peter phoned the State Emergency Service (SES). He waited for several rings. Someone picked up the phone and the line went dead. Peter did not have time to phone again. He unplugged the computer and lifted it higher, along with his DVD collection. Marie grabbed their photo albums and put them up in the wardrobe in the bedroom. Outside, the murky torrent was almost level with the windowsills. Marie remembered the guinea pigs, and waded to the bathroom. Downstairs, the car was swept from the garage and thrown into a tree. Something hit the back verandah hard and shook the house. The back steps and verandah smashed off.

Peter phoned the local bishop, told him they were flooded and asked him to pray for them. He assured Peter he would. The phone went dead. As Marie entered the bathroom, a tree smashed through the wall. She fell over in the water and came up spluttering. She was panicking. 'Help! Help! Help! Somebody help!' she screamed. The guinea pig cage had fallen over and the animals had swum for their lives. One reached the bathroom basin and clung desperately to the taps. Marie picked up the shocked, soaked animal. Peter hurried to help Marie from the bathroom.

Suddenly the house bounced up like a cork. It floated a metre higher in the water and was swept away. It hit a large tree and the kitchen smashed off, setting the house spinning as it moved along. Peter and Marie needed to get to the centre of the house.

They headed for the dining room. Their blue cattle dog Chloe was standing on a floating couch. Chloe sprang on to Peter's shoulder and held on tightly as they waded into the dining room. Peter and Marie stood in the water either side of the solid timber table, holding the dog and the guinea pig on the table. Marie was still crying for help.

Peter remembered he needed his medications for the deep vein thrombosis in his legs, and insulin for his newly diagnosed diabetes. He waded to the bedroom and saw rushing water outside the house, halfway up the windows. Water was swirling almost waist-deep inside. They were fighting a losing battle.

Peter still had his mobile phone, so he dialled triple zero and asked for the police. They asked him what he could see. He told them, 'There's all sorts of stuff floating down the street. There's bird aviaries, shipping containers, sheds, cars and wheels.' Peter looked out the side window and saw powerlines in the water. He told the operator, 'And you can add live wires to that.' Peter gave their address at 11 Anzac Avenue, Grantham, adding: 'But don't look for us here because the water is taking us wherever it's going to take us.' Peter knew there was not much the police or anyone else could do. The water was running too fast for anybody to get close enough to help them. The operator told them, 'Try and hang on.' As the phone line cut for the last time, hanging on was all they could do now.

The house moved out of the yard. There were no more trees, just a large, flat farm paddock. The house sped up and soon it was travelling at what felt like 60 to 70 kilometres an hour. The trees and flood debris, which had been slamming into the house, were now travelling alongside it. The water was still roaring. Marie was frantic. Peter took out his hearing aids and put them in his pocket so they wouldn't get wet. He wasn't thinking very clearly. He needed to be able to hold on to Marie to calm her, but he couldn't hold the animals and comfort her at the same time. He pulled out a drawer, tipped the paperwork into the water and put the guinea pig in. The drawer drifted away with the wet, shivering guinea pig aboard. Chloe the dog climbed back onto Peter's shoulder.

As the house sped across the paddock it missed other houses, went between power poles along a road, under the powerlines, crossed over a road and continued, at the mercy of the current, into the next paddock.

Peter and Marie Van Straten had been retired for two years and had always wanted to live in the country. They found a highset Queenslander for rent, on acreage in the small rural town of Grantham, and moved in seven months before the flood. The new house in the country provided them with a spacious home with prolific fruit trees in the backyard and space for their guinea pigs and chickens. The cheaper rent stretched their pension further, and they were accepted warmly into the community. As winter passed and spring and summer rain arrived, the wide, flat farm paddocks became green, and vegetable crops grew fast. As the rain continued, water began to lie in the paddocks and the drains beside the roads. The water level in Sandy Creek near their house rose and fell, but stayed within its banks. On Boxing Day the creek brimmed over the banks, sending muddy water flowing across the main road of the town, Anzac Avenue, before subsiding again into the creek.

In the following weeks the water rose twice more. It ran under the house a few centimetres deep and left a thin layer of slippery mud. Marie was helping in the clean-up when she slipped and broke her arm. On 10 January 2011, Peter and Marie woke to find a pile of logs and debris blocking the gate; the water had come up again during the night and receded. Peter called the council to have the debris removed, and Marie checked the weather bureau's website and saw that the creek levels in local Ma Ma Creek, Tenthill Creek and Sandy Creek were all falling. The only creek that was rising was Lockyer Creek, but it was miles away in Helidon – she felt sorry for the people of Helidon who were about to be flooded.

After cruising for 1.7 kilometres, Peter and Marie's house suddenly came to rest in a vast farm paddock. A protruding bore pipe had stopped a car that had been swept away, which in turn had stopped the house. The current began to rush through it, carrying their furniture and goods away. They saw a dozen cars float past. Peter was grateful none of them smashed into the wreckage of the house. 'They were going at a pretty fast clip. If any of them had hit us we would have been finished — it would have demolished what was left of the house.' The water was waist-deep but flowing fast. Peter could see out where exterior walls of the house had been torn away by the force of the water. Four or five waves were heading towards them. As each one hit, the house moved and the water level rose again. Soon it was up to Peter's neck.

Marie could not touch the floor. She couldn't swim. They needed some flotation. Peter saw the fridge floating on its back in what was left of the kitchen. Marie hung on to him and he waded towards it. One side of the kitchen ceiling had fallen down on an angle when the exterior wall of the kitchen had smashed off. Now the fallen ceiling was trapping the fridge and holding it inside the house, on the last remaining quarter of the kitchen floor. The top of the fridge touched the fallen ceiling, and the bottom was held in by a fallen beam. Peter lifted the fridge door open to give them something to hold onto. As he worked his way around the fridge, the current pushed him against the collapsed ceiling and swept Marie on top of him. Peter struggled to keep Marie's head above water. He managed to get to his feet and stood on one leg. He lifted his other knee for her to sit on.

They discussed options. Marie suggested trying to grab something that was floating past and getting to a boat she could see, but the current was too dangerous. Peter tried to push open the manhole in the ceiling, hoping they could climb out of the water into the roof cavity. He pushed hard on the manhole cover but it was jammed. Debris was still rushing through the house. Something in the water smashed into Peter and the two collapsed as his leg was knocked out from under him. They felt themselves floating away and grabbed for each other. Peter finally got his feet on the floor and his head above water. He held on to Marie, whose shorts had been swept off by the current. They were together, but their future was precarious.

With time to contemplate their situation, Marie looked at the plaster on her broken arm. She remembered the staff at Toowoomba Base Hospital who had told her only four days before to be careful not to get the plaster wet. She laughed as she thought how angry they would be that it was drenched. Peter's mind suddenly turned to the household bills. 'Love, how are we going to pay the rent this week?' he asked Marie. Marie's wet plaster and paying rent on a house that was falling apart around them helped distract them from their fears.

After being in the water for an hour they heard rescue helicopters overhead. The thump, thump of the rotors became louder and then faded away, as the helicopters picked up survivors from rooftops and dropped them to higher ground, returning for more, over and over again. The helicopters worked for an hour but they didn't come to Peter and Marie. The couple realised they would need to signal for help.

Peter had been standing on one leg, with Marie on his knee, for about two hours. Marie, a nurse, could see that Peter was becoming hypothermic. He was shivering and had turned a nasty shade of grey. The sun was going down. They had to try to get out of the water and get medical attention as soon as possible. Marie was also beginning to feel hypothermic — her toes were numb, her hands were shaking and she was losing the ability to control the movements of her limbs. She didn't think she could last much longer.

For Peter to signal for help to the helicopters, he had to move towards the edge of the house wreckage. But he couldn't do this unless Marie could hold on to something herself to keep her head above water. She climbed onto the beam that was trapping the fridge, until she was lying on it with her arms and legs dangling either side. From there she could hold onto the fridge with her unbroken arm. Now, Peter needed to climb out of the kitchen and find a way to get the helicopter's attention. He pulled away a piece of timber that had him trapped. It hit Marie on the head as he pulled it out, but luckily she was okay. More pieces of wood were trapping him in and he couldn't pull them free. He would have to dive underwater and swim under the fallen timbers. He took a deep breath and went for it. He could feel his body being sucked out of the house by the current and he thought, 'I've done something wrong here.' He raised one hand above the water, hoping Marie could reach him. She realised he was in trouble and grabbed for his hand with her broken arm. Their hands found each other and she pulled him towards her. Sharp pain shot up her arm: she had re-broken her wrist.

Peter got his head back above the water and grabbed the timber beam that Marie was on to get his balance. Now he could move closer to the edge of the house wreckage. He reached up and grabbed onto a timber picture rail, and let the pressure of the current hold him up against the wall. From here he waved his arms, hoping the helicopter rescue crews would see him.

A helicopter that had been plying across the town flew low over the house. Peter and Marie waved desperately. Marie was at breaking point. She began to cry. 'Please see us, please see us.' The helicopter flew low over the house: it had seen them! The helicopter ascended again and flew away. The sound of the rotors faded, as the familiar roar of the water filled their ears once again. Maybe the crew hadn't seen them after all.

* * *

From June 2010, a La Niña climate pattern had been deepening in the central Pacific Ocean. Cool surface water was streaming across the equator. The pattern continued intensifying, becoming one of the strongest La Niña systems on record. Sea surface temperatures in the Australian region during 2010 were +0.54 °C above the 1961 to 1990 average, the warmest on record for the Australian region. Record high monthly sea surface temperatures were set during 2010 in March, April, June, September, October, November and December. From August, heavy rainfall became increasingly widespread across Queensland. Many areas of the state received double their long-term average rain, and during September many locations received more than four times the normal monthly rainfall.

The Bureau of Meteorology conducted briefings and exercises with local councils to prepare for the coming extreme wet season. In October, the Bureau briefed the premier and cabinet. In early November, Emergency Management Queensland's (EMQ) Toowoomba office coordinated an exercise for five disaster management groups in the Lockyer Valley and Darling Downs to practise their emergency response to a major flood and storm event, simulating a tropical cyclone crossing the coast and causing widespread flooding. For two days during Exercise Orko, evacuation plans were rehearsed, call centres were given practice dealing with large numbers of emergency calls, public information and warning systems were refined, and ideas for improvements were noted.

Monsoon rains began from the end of November, causing major flooding across the southern half of the state. Over Christmas an intense rain band flooded the coastal cities of Bundaberg and Rockhampton, as well as many inland towns. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh launched a public appeal to help victims of the floods.

By early January the situation was becoming so serious that the regional director of the Bureau of Meteorology personally briefed the State Disaster Management Group and the premier and her cabinet. At the briefings he predicted several hundred millimetres of rain over the following four to eight days. Widespread flooding continued. For the first time in the state's history, entire populations of small towns beside major rivers were evacuated by helicopter, as floodwaters engulfed them.

The intense monsoon was then enhanced by the arrival of a periodic pressure wave, the Madden Julian Oscillation, on 9 January. At 5 am the next morning, the Bureau of Meteorology issued a severe weather warning for heavy rainfall leading to localised flash flooding. Unfortunately, residents of the Lockyer Valley are not generally aware that they belong to the Bureau's south-east coast district, so they didn't realise that flash flood warnings in that area posed a threat to them. From 1 am on 10 January, a group of thunderstorms started to cross the coast. Between 9 am and 9.30 am, two intense thunderstorms in the band of storms crossed the coast. A flood warning was issued at 10.28 am for Lockyer Creek and rivers in the Brisbane Valley. One of the storms moving south-west converged with another moving west and formed a single storm at about 11 am. It passed over Somerset and Wivenhoe dams, the main water supply dams of the state capital, Brisbane. A severe weather warning was issued at 11 am for heavy rainfall leading to localised flash flooding. The combined storm measured about 40 kilometres across. It continued moving south-west at 30 kilometres per hour, intensifying as it went, until it was producing rainfall of 100 millimetres per hour as it passed across the Upper Brisbane River Valley towards Toowoomba.

As the storm cell approached Toowoomba, it was forced upwards over the Great Dividing Range, then slowed down and continued to intensify. The situation was becoming more dangerous. At 1 pm the Bureau phoned the State Disaster Coordination Centre, reporting exceptionally heavy rainfall of 75 millimetres in one hour, west of Wivenhoe Dam. They were expecting flash flooding in Toowoomba in the next hour or two. The Bureau also reported that a volunteer 'storm spotter' at Cressbrook Dam had reported several landslides caused by the heavy rain. By early afternoon the Bureau realised the conditions could result in the most severe flooding in the Brisbane Valley since the record flood of 1974. With the city of Ipswich and the state capital under threat, their priority was flood forecasting, warning and monitoring of the lower Brisbane River to estimate potential flooding levels and to liaise with the major dam operators and the city councils of Brisbane and Ipswich.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from The Torrent by Amanda Gearing. Copyright © 2017 Amanda Gearing. Excerpted by permission of University of Queensland Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction to the second edition,
Preface to the first edition,
From drought to flood,
Spring Bluff,
Murphys Creek,
Toowoomba,
Withcott,
Postmans Ridge,
Helidon,
Carpendale,
Grantham,
The aftermath,
Rebuilding,
Controversy,
Five years on,
Appendices,
1 Flash flood precautions,
2 Why report on trauma?,
Notes,
Acknowledgements,