‘I CRIED TEARS OF RELIEF’
Panic coursed through Jacqui Taylor’s veins as the police officer on the phone told her no-one was coming to rescue her family. She was trapped in her two-storey Lismore home with her husband Mark, their four children and her grandmother, Ida.
“I tried to get the SES and the police, but got passed between phones. Finally, the police answered and they just said they were inundated and our best course of action would be to get on the roof.
“I had no idea how I would hold onto a 4-year-old and get my 90-year-old grandma up on the roof. I was very scared by then – petrified. I kept going out the front just not knowing what to do.” Jacqui, 39, spotted some strangers on a boat and used her flashlight to get their attention.
“They yelled they would come back. Thankfully, five minutes later they did and took my grandma and the kids. Then they came back again for us. I just cried to the people in the boat –
I was so relieved. I honestly didn’t think we’d make it.”
Jacqui wants to give her heartfelt thanks to the strangers who rescued her family.
“I don’t even want to imagine what would have happened without them.”