Selfless act of heroism Kathy’s tireless work for others
ONE SES team leader is being hailed a hero after putting the lives of other flood-affected Townsville residents before her own.
Kathy Askew, 46, finished a 12-hour shift helping evacuate people before returning home to find she was also being evacuated.
“I finished at 7pm and went home only for my husband to say we have just had a door knock from the army and we need to evacuate too,” Ms Askew said.
“I managed to grab a quick shower and put on some clothes, grab our evacuation bags that we had ready to go and took my daughter and got out,” she said.
The last two weeks have been some of the busiest of Ms Askew’s life, from sandbagging to evacuations to recovery efforts.
“We started off doing a lot of sandbagging jobs initially which soon turned into evacuations.
“We got a lot of people out of Idalia … we weren’t quite sure what the risk was then but we managed to get out some kids and elderly people.”
Ms Askew said she stayed with her brother-in-law during the ordeal until it was safe to return to her home in Queens Rd, Hermit Park.
“We have a great peer support group,” she said.
“They actually called me later in the day despite being out on jobs themselves, and
banding together in times of disasters, to help a mate, or a street or a town, in times when the bad luck seems to repeatedly rain down. checked that I was leaving.”
Ms Askew said she was lucky to have gotten out relatively unscathed.
“Everything was fine at my place in the end … we were reasonably high and dry, we did get the river through the backyard but some of the streets lower than us weren’t so lucky.”
She said the focus of the SES would now be on getting to those lower priority jobs that had popped up over the last week or so.
“We are still trying to get to some of those jobs that are on a massive list of people who needed assistance throughout the last few days and see if they still need assistance.
“Some roof jobs … people still need tarping done and we are just going to see what people need, basically.”