ANGELS IN ORANGE
AN SES volunteer who helped pluck two police officers and more than 100 residents from rising floodwaters said he saw torches “waving from balconies”, with people needing to be saved at every corner.
Reece Booij ( pictured, right) was driving an SES flood boat with fellow volunteer and coxswain Richard Patrick ( left) in Rosslea in the hours before and after the Ross River Dam spillway gates fully opened on Sunday night, releasing two million litres of water into the river per second.
“We’d been going in the night. It’d be dark and we’d see torches waving from balconies and we’d pull up to see what they needed,” Mr Booij said
“We picked a few up that had tried to walk out and slipped and fell in the water and couldn’t get their footing again.”
A total of 111 civilians were rescued by the pair. Mr Booij estimates other boats would have saved at least 60 to 70 people each. According to official figures, in the 24 hours to Monday morning about 18 swiftwater rescues were carried out, and about 1100 people taken to safety by the ADF, police and QFES.
Under normal circumstances, the boat is allowed to carry two operators and six civilians, but Mr Booij said at one point during the night there were 14 civilians, four dogs and two cats on board.
“You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” he said.
“We were expecting a bit of water, get them out, but it just kept getting higher and higher and then luckily we just happened to be at the right place at the right time.”
The boat happened to be near the location in Charters Towers Rd where two police officers were swept away by rapidly rising floodwaters.
“I don’t think the coppers could’ve held on for much longer,” Mr Booij said.
“We had seven swiftwater technicians in the boat. We tied the boat off to a pole in the middle of the street and lowered the boat back into the water.
“(Then they) lowered another rib off the back of our boat to pull the officer out of the water.”
He said the female officer was rescued first, followed by her partner, who was “hanging on to the branches” of a tree.
The pair had been going since about 1pm on Sunday and at 1.30am on Monday left Rosslea to refuel.
They were about to head into Fairfield Waters to rescue more people when a man ran up to the boat.
“He said, ‘my daughter is still at home on Carr St and she had a nine or 10-month-old baby’,” Mr Booij said.
“And we went to rescue her and pulled another 20 people out of the water from houses on the way there.
“Every time we went around the corner there would be someone else flagging us down.”