From Tanya Lawrie’s veranda, it began as a classic Brisbane afternoon shower.
Water fell in sheets that Thursday afternoon, filling the gutters and swelling the Enoggera Creek just a few hundred metres away.
Were it not for the drone on her tin roof, she may have even heard a collective sigh from her Herston neighbours as the fat drops of rain doused another oppressive summer’s day in the city’s inner north.
But one hour of rain soon turned into two.
And two hours turned into an entire night.
By day three, the situation on Butterfield Street was no longer a novelty.
The car alarm of a nearby Honda sedan had long been silenced as the vehicle slipped underwater, while the children’s playground across the road also disappeared into a soup of leaves, branches and mud.
Tanya had lived here through the 2011 floods, but this was different.
“There was always the risk that those few houses across the road from us will get water into their yard … and some of the older ones might get it into the lower part of their place,” she says.
“But nothing like this. It’s just so much worse. So much worse. There’s so many more houses affected.”
Tanya’s street soon became a river – cutting off any escape – and eventually the suburb of Herston was an island in a sinking city.
The power went out, and people crowded their vehicles up the side of the one property that still had a driveway.
Two doors down, a kayak ferried a traumatised family to safety.
On its own, Tanya’s story is a shocking account of a natural disaster that – even a week later – continues to leave her and her neighbours in limbo.
But the situation facing this one street, and this one city, has been replicated across the eastern seaboard.
And the devastating, deadly east coast low responsible for the chaos has not yet finished wreaking havoc.
Queensland chaos
Billions of dollars worth of damage is estimated to have been caused in the space of a week as several months worth of rain smashed South-Eastern Queensland.
The unexpectedly severe ‘rain bomb’ that emerged Wednesday 10 days ago created a slow-moving wall of water, swelling rivers and forcing tens of thousands of Queenslanders to evacuate their homes.
Residents of Gympie copped an incredible 400mm in an hour, creating a tide that washed through thousands of houses and businesses, while the Brisbane River peaked at 3.85 metres on Monday, its highest since the 2011 disaster.
The sight of a quad bike stuck in power lines gives some indication of how high the water got in some places, with thousands of insurance claims rolling in as the clean-up commenced.
The flood is said to have inundated nearly 20,000 homes in Queensland stretching from the Darling Downs, to Noosa, the Sunshine Coast, through Brisbane and the Gold Coast, with many roads cut off and tens of thousands being left without electricity for days.
Tragically, as of Thursday, nine people had lost their lives, including a 76-year-old man who was reported missing in floodwater at Glen Esk near Lake Wivenhoe on Sunday. He was found in his submerged vehicle at Paddy Gully Creek, Moombra.
Of course, the weather paid no attention to state borders, with neighbours in New South Wales also gravely affected by an unprecedented torrent of water.
NSW in the firing line
On Thursday NSW residents were being warned to prepare for another day of intense flooding, with a severe weather warning in place from the Mid-North Coast to Sydney and the south coast.
Rain lashed Newcastle and the Central Coast, while the Hawkesbury, Nepean and Georges rivers continued to rise at a rapid rate – sparking a string of urgent evacuation orders across Sydney’s southwest and west.
Many schools were shut, while deteriorating conditions had authorities predicting further evacuations.
At the peak of the chaos, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said at least 500,000 people in the state were subject to an evacuation order or warning.
Mr Perrottet even issued a warning to those communities who had never seen flooding before.
“What we are seeing today is unprecedented,” he said.
“Simply because your community has not flooded in the past, does not mean it will not flood over the course of this week.
State Emergency Service crews were even on standby for flooding in Gippsland as the system stretched down the south coast and into Victoria.
Of course, residents in the state’s Northern Rivers region had already felt the brunt of the storm system, with many communities around Lismore and Ballina unrecognisable amid rising waters.
The worst flooding in five decades even inundated the Lismore McDonald’s, a service station and an entire shopping centre, while up to 1000 desperate residents spent an anxious night stranded on rooftops.
Ballina residents had been ordered to evacuate just after midnight on Wednesday, with floodwaters of 2.5 metres predicted to hit the town, cutting off communications.
At least four people were confirmed dead in NSW on Thursday as a mountainous clean-up effort kicked off.
While the situation in Lismore was dire – and the extent of the damage is still being tallied – the town did deliver one of the most heartwarming stories of the week.
With waters rising, forty-five Fijian abattoir workers – who had arrived in Australia just three weeks ago – helped save 60 elderly residents at a retirement home.
One of the men told ABC radio the crew went out in a boat for a daybreak search and rescue mission, spotting several people calling out from their rooftops.
“The water level was rising but the only thing that we can do, we cannot be able to come from the doorway — the only thing that we can go through was the glass,” Josua Tawakedrau told the ABC’s Pacific Beat.
“So the boys break the glass, they went in for the elderly people yes, they just went in and they got out all the elderly people in the old peoples‘ home, 60 of them.”
Danger lingers
As the week wore on, it became clear that Queenslanders would again need to batten down the hatches.
Residents in Grantham, east of Toowoomba, were on Thursday being evacuated as a precaution as more wild weather arrived.
Storms were also threatening to disrupt major clean-up efforts across the southeast and leave hundreds cut off.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said she had “serious concern” for people and homes from Brisbane all the way north through the Fraser Coast and to Bundaberg, with people asked to think about “not being on the roads … and staying at home.”
“The conditions are going to be unstable for the next 24 to 48 hours.”
Brisbane, which received more than three quarters of the rainfall it would normally get over the whole year, remained a mess of confusion and chaos nearly a week after the initial fall as road closures, ongoing power outages, and the threat of more water stymied clean-up efforts.
It was Sunday evening – day four of the storm – when Tanya Lawrie’s neighbours across the road in Herston were forced to shelter with her.
The water eventually peaked at her front yard – or in the front rooms of the people across the road – with just three houses on the block spared a major incursion of water onto their properties.
While Tanya’s place was relatively unaffected, there has been little relief in the days since the peak.
Her home on Thursday remained one of about 400 in her suburb still without power, a situation that looked sexjmtzywt to drag on for a number of days yet.
Meanwhile, a stinking, solid cake of mud still lines the road, and the footpaths remain packed with the ruined belongings and debris of residents who couldn’t hold off the tide.
A mini mud army has been hard at work emptying rooms on Butterfield Street, sourcing food and supplies and generally clearing debris.
Tanya and a number of her neighbours say they have also taken it upon themselves to direct traffic as the road to the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital at the end of the street remained blocked off, causing a huge amount of confusion and frustration for those seeking help.
“That’s been devastating … hospital staff trying to get through, you know, desperately trying to get to their jobs. They don’t know where to go,” Tanya says.
“We’ve had, I couldn’t tell you, how many women in labour trying to get to the hospital … (we’re) giving directions to fathers to be while their partner is sitting in the front seat in active contractions.
“We had someone come through with half a foot. We had ambulances come through who didn‘t know how to get to the hospital.
“People just yelling and upset and so, so stressed.”
She praised the efforts of the police, council crews, and Energex workers for their care and attention during the week, even though it was clear numbers were mighty thin on the ground for the situation at hand.
She admitted to feeling frustrated about the protracted nature of the support being provided to her community, but acknowledged many were also facing delays in information and a rapidly-evolving weather system.
“It’s been lovely seeing how much support has been going. But most of that’s community support,” Tanya said.
“There‘s something really lovely about the community taking care of community.”
