The day that both broke and warmed my heart – 15 Jan 2011

Yesterday I cried all the way home from Fairfield to Windaroo. My home was well away from the floods. I hadn’t lost anything except my naïve assumptions about the damage a flood can do. But I couldn’t hold back the emotion.

As the flood waters receded, we knew that we had to do something to help those affected by the Brisbane floods. Thousands of homes had been inundated by flood waters and they were saying on TV and on the internet that an army of volunteers was needed. I arranged for my Mum to come and watch the kids for the day, packed the car with brooms, shovels, mops, buckets, water and other cleaning supplies, and set off to try to “do some good”.

My brother in law and his wife had friends on a street in Fairfield whose house had been submerged up to just under their roof, so they sent me the address and I headed for Fairfield. I was nervous as I didn’t know what to expect. As I drove under the overpass at Mt Gravatt I saw a huge line of volunteers over the bridge, waiting to get on buses to get to flood affected areas. This was the first I saw of the “mud army” and it literally gave me goose bumps, to see hundreds of people coming together to help total strangers. The traffic on the highway was free flowing but as soon as I exited the highway and turned onto Ipswich Road I knew it was going to be a long wait.

There was a constant stream of cars coming from all roads feeding onto Ipswich Road and the flow of traffic became slower and slower as I approached Venner Road, the turn off to Fairfield. I was amazed that no-one seemed impatient – there was no beeping or aggressive behaviour. Everyone was anxious to get to their destination and start the clean up, but everyone was polite and patient.

The lights at the corner of Ipswich and Venner Road were out, and police were directing traffic. Once onto Venner Road the traffic became much faster, and as I approached the end of Venner Road I started to see the destruction caused by the flood. As I turned onto Fairfield Road there was thick mud coating the surface of the road, and car started to slip as I went around the roundabout. Once I found my destination, I realised that the damage was far worse than I could have possibly imagined.

It was immediately apparent that Fairfield was full of people wanting to help. There were cars lining both sides of the street, with only enough room to drive one way down the street. I was lucky to find an empty spot to park on the corner near the house that I was coming to clean. I opened my car boot, left my shoes under my car, and put on the gum boots I had borrowed from my mother.

When you think about a “flood”, you only think about water, and you think that water should be able to go in and out of a house and just get stuff wet. You forget that river water contains an awful lot of silt. I realise now that’s why it is so brown! I knew things would be wet, but I did not anticipate the tonnes of mud that had been dropped on this suburb.

Thick slimy mud coated every surface. The grass was brown and matted down, and as I walked over it, my feet sank a few inches with every step. I was immediately grateful for the gum boots. Had I been wearing anything else, my feet would have been soaked in seconds. Every tree was also coated in brown slime, up to a height of about 2 metres, well above my head. The leaves were all wilted and heavy under the toxic sludge.

It smelled like someone had dumped the contents of all of Brisbane’s sewers onto this one street. We had been warned that the water was mixed with sewerage so I was expecting that. In retrospect we probably should have brought the Vicks and rubbed it under our noses.

I located my brother in law, hosing down the driveway of his friend’s house, and headed inside to help where I could. The house was full of volunteers, pulling up tiles, scraping paint off walls, removing the nail boards along the walls where the carpet had been anchored, and washing off mud. I grabbed my bucket and gloves and started washing walls in one of the back bedrooms.

The thing about river mud is that it gets into every single tiny crack and crevice. When you know that this mud contains dangerous germs and bacteria, and that these rooms need to be occupied again as soon as possible, you know you have to remove every speck of mud that you can find, so it can be slow work. There were old-style white security grills on the windows, and every bar had to be washed clean. After the doors of the wardrobe were removed, I washed the back of them. I had to change the water in my bucket six times before they were clean. The mud is also stubborn, it actually has to be scrubbed off – it won’t come off with a quick wipe. In one room there was a screen door, and the mud was embedded in the join where the screen is attached to the door.

Some walls were destroyed and the plaster had to be removed, but others were passable after stripping the paint off and washing them.

Inside the bathroom cupboard was a layer of mud an inch thick. We left that for those with high pressure hoses to get at first. It was strenuous work but with so many people helping, it was done in a few hours and we stopped to take a break.

So far what I had seen was definitely sad but I was glad that this man had not lost the contents of his home. He had just finished renovating on Monday with new plaster, paint and carpet, but with the flood warnings he made the call to rip up the carpet and take it to higher ground, just in case. He was getting the home ready for his family to move in next week. You would never know that the house had just been renovated – the water damage made it look like it was about 300 years old, with all of the paint peeling off every surface, and parts of the floor broken away.

The owner had to leave part-way through the morning because it all became a bit too much, but is hoping to be able to carry out most of the repairs himself or with friends, to make the home inhabitable again.

As we took a break, we noticed a lady sweeping next door, alone. We approached her and asked if we could help, but she told us that she was just a friend of the mother of the owner of the house, and that the house was currently rented out. The tenant had not come back yet, so the house had not been opened since the flood waters receded. She couldn’t get into the house so she had tidied up outside and was then leaving. We were concerned about what would happen to the house if the contents were left to putrefy, but didn’t want to see ourselves on the evening news charged with vandalism or looting, so we decided there was nothing we could do yet.

Around this time we started to see increasing numbers of people walking the streets offering food and drink to anyone who wanted it. Almost everyone offered sandwiches, most also had water bottles, some had soft drink, many also had treats like chocolate brownies, pikelets, muffins, donuts, and lollies. The first people we encountered were four teenagers, carrying plates of cookies and sandwiches. I took an Anzac cookie and thanked them. I was glad I had remembered to bring the hand sanitiser, as it had been impossible to keep all moisture out of my gloves. Some others included a man wheeling his food along the street in a wheelbarrow, two girls pouring juice into plastic cups and offering them to those coming out of houses, and another group that had slabs of water bottles, fruit, muffins and sandwiches all loaded on the back of utes. The lady there was taking the lids off the water bottles so we could be sure not to contaminate them. There were so many people offering food and I felt like I wanted to take something from each of them to show my appreciation for their efforts.

We discussed where to go next and were ready to go and join another group that was working on Yvonne Street, when the lady from next door arrived to take stock of what remained of her home. We felt awful for her, knowing that she would open the door to find a house full of mud and water. She spent about ten minutes inside. Her friend came out after a few minutes, crying. She had also lost everything in her house, but told us that she was insured, where this lady was not. Eventually the owner, Samantha, came out and indicated that she was happy for us to go ahead and do what we could.

I have no idea where the army that instantly appeared came from, but within seconds, there were about twenty people coming down her driveway to help clear out her house. I went around to the back door, which opened into the laundry, and then into the living room. To say that I was shocked is a massive understatement. It looked like someone had dumped a truck of rubbish and sewerage into her house, and then closed the door and a hurricane had come through. All of the furniture had been tossed around each room and was upside down, ripped apart, and covered in sludge. In the laundry, what had probably once been neatly sorted baskets of clothes were now huge piles of mud. There was a toilet immediately inside the back door, and even though the rest of the house smelled awful, the toilet smelled worse.

I started by helping to clear out the laundry, which meant carrying piles of soppy, slimy clothes out past their owner to dump them on the curb. She stood on the driveway directing volunteers to set aside the things that she wanted to keep. The clothes were past saving. Trying to put them through a regular washing machine would likely wreck the machine.

Once the laundry was clear of household items, I moved on to the kitchen. The kitchen bench had broken off and was on the floor, a bloated mess of chipboard. We lifted it onto its side and some boys immediately grabbed it and carted it out. The sink was full of muddy water, so we tackled that first, I had long gloves on so I was able to reach in and remove plates, cups, and cutlery until I could feel the plug. Once I removed it, the water slowly drained away. Thankfully the plumbing was still working for the most part in these houses. One of the taps was running and no amount of twisting could get it to turn off, so we left it running.

At this point several more volunteers entered the house and I heard someone call for garbage bags. I had some in my car boot but was ankle deep in mud and the new volunteers were mostly clean, so I gave one of them my car keys and told her to go and get the bags from my car. I had $100 and my driver’s license and ATM card in the boot so I was hoping she was trustworthy! I can’t imagine any other circumstances where I would feel reasonably confident giving a stranger my car keys. When she gave back she told me that she’d pressed the lock button 3 times so she was pretty sure it was locked. The garbage bags came in handy straight away as much of the contents of the pantry had to be tossed out and we had nothing to put them in to carry them out en-mass.

I focussed on the kitchen cupboards for a while. I would make piles of items on top of the stove and as fast as I put them there, someone would come and take them outside. I hoped that much of the kitchen ware could be saved at least. Inside each cupboard I found plates, cups, bowls and mugs, all totally full of mud. I would empty each one into the sink and then add them to the pile to be removed. On top of the overhead cupboards there were a number of vases and trinkets. Many of them appeared to be unbroken, which amazed me. There was a basket of recipe books on top of the overhead cupboards but the books were so full of water that I couldn’t lift it down until another girl came to help me get it down. Despite being as careful as I could, water still trickled into my boots and gloves as I lifted things out of the cupboard.

In the lower cupboards I found things like toasters, blenders, and sandwich makers, all of which had to be thrown out. There were a few saucepans and frying pans that I hoped could be saved. The lino on the kitchen floor had been half ripped up and folded over by the force of the waters, and a mouldy rockmelon was under it. After the stove was removed I rolled up the rest of the lino and again, it was instantly picked up by a few of the people coming through the house and taken out the front to the growing rubbish pile.

With another lady I pulled apart the kitchen drawers to get to their contents. The wood that they were made out of was so swollen that we had to rip the fronts off, remove the contents, and then slide out the sides and the bottoms. We found cutlery, all of which I figured could be washed off, along with the usual assortment of implements that you find in kitchen drawers. Each drawer was full of sludge and we had to feel around to make sure that we got everything. There were several knives so we were hoping not to encounter one at the wrong angle. In one drawer we found a stack of papers and put them aside in case they were important and could be saved.

While I was in the kitchen, others had been working on the other rooms and I would say that within about 30 minutes, the entire contents of the house had been removed. When I went back out the front, the rubbish pile was massive. Couches, chairs, tables, carpet, lino, curtains, books, clothes, toys, dvds, everything that you would expect to find in every house in Queensland. To the side was stacked all of the things that could hopefully be saved. There were a few shelves, along with much of the kitchen ware, some toys, and lots of trinkets that looked like they would have personal meaning.

The floors were swept out and then those with high pressure hoses moved in to hose down every room in the house. Samantha was standing on the road crying as she watched her entire life heaped in muddy piles on her front lawn. I felt like crying too but reminded myself that I had absolutely nothing to cry about and kept it together. She left shortly afterwards, but one of her friends stayed to watch what was happening and help where she could. Her friend was also shaking and was very emotional. She told us that Samantha had only just finished paying off the couch in December, that she is a single mum, and that she works hard to provide for her family.

One of the men found the hard drive to her computer, and cleaned it up as best he could and gave it to her friend, so that she could see if anything could be retrieved. We learned that the people on this street had very little warning and were not told how bad things were going to get. Her neighbour had prayed and felt he needed to save what he could, and had ripped up his newly laid carpet, but there was no official notice that their houses would be flooded this badly. It was obvious in Samantha’s house that the water had reached the roof, as there was even mud on the ceiling. Next door he was slightly higher and the water had not reached the newly painted ceiling.

As the house was hosed out, we moved to try to clean as many of her belongings as we could. They would need to be cleaned again before use, but at least we could get the mud off so they could be put through a dishwasher without destroying it. There were about ten people with buckets and sponges, taking each item, and carefully cleaning it, before putting it on any available clean surface. A man came along offering us clean wash cloths. Meanwhile the friend was looking at the rubbish pile, picking out things that she thought could still be saved. As we worked we asked each other where we were from, and whether we knew the occupant of the house. Not a single volunteer knew Samantha, and they had come from as far as Redcliffe, the Gold Coast, and Cleveland to lend a hand. For the most part we didn’t swap names though. I think everyone was content to remain anonymous volunteers.

As the pile of items to be cleaned got smaller, some of the volunteers left to help elsewhere, and by about 4pm there were about six of us still working inside and outside the house. I then turned my attention to the pile of documents that we had found in the drawer. As I started to peel them apart I found a stack of photographs. Earlier in the day, Samantha’s friend had been going from volunteer to volunteer, asking if anyone had seen a box of photos. I gathered that it was important to her that they be found and for some reason I then felt like this was the most important thing I could do for Samantha that day.

I thought about my own photos and how I would feel if I lost them all. There were baby photos, photos of children, old photos from when she was in primary school, her first communion cake, among others. I also found a few greeting cards, and it was clear she had saved them for a reason. One was from a friend. I didn’t read it all but saw enough to know it was likely precious to her and needed to be saved if possible.

One at a time, I carefully wiped the mud off the photos. Many of them were beyond help, the ink already washed off the paper. But there were about fifty photos that were either partly or fully intact, and as each was washed, I put it on any available surface to dry. The wind came up and they started to blow around, so I went looking for somewhere to put them. Eventually I found that in one of the bedrooms, a cupboard door had been removed. I laid it down on the floor, and spread the photos out on it to dry, where hopefully she will find them when she comes home again.

As I was working on the photos, the remaining volunteers moved all of her belongings to the back porch, so that they could not be seen from the road by any looters that happened to be walking by. Another food cart came by offering hot sausages in bread.

As we finished up we thanked each other and hoped that when Samantha came home, she would see her house in a much better state than it had been in only a few hours earlier. I still don’t know how someone looks at a house that has been gutted that badly, and plans to move back in though. To me they looked like the kinds of houses you see that are ready to be demolished. I give great respect to all those that now have to take the next step of making these houses inhabitable again.

I headed for my car to get cleaned up so that I could drive home without destroying the interior of my car. I took one boot off by pushing it off with the other foot, then had to figure out how to get the remaining one off! In the end I wrapped my sock around the end so I could push it off without getting my hands or feet muddy. I took my muddy jeans off and changed into clean shorts. As I put my feet back into my clean shoes, I felt something squishy in the end. I thought my sock was bunched up but pulled my foot out to find a gecko had taken up residence in it! He was probably taking refuge from the mud in the cleanest place he could find.

Apparently shortly after I left, a masseuse showed up to offer some relief to those that had been working all day. What a great way to share your skills!

As I drove home I cried. I wasn’t really sure why, because I certainly didn’t lose anything in the flood. My home is unaffected. I was driving home to a clean house with a working shower and a comfortable bed and couch. I didn’t know anyone that lost a family member in the flood. I just felt so overwhelmingly sad for Samantha and for all of the others on that street and throughout Brisbane, Ipswich, Toowoomba, Grantham, who saw their entire lives dumped on their front lawns today. I felt that they must feel the work required to fix their homes is massive. The enormity of the task is hard for me to comprehend. It will require money and resources that they don’t have. Like Samantha, many of them will have lost things they only just bought, things they worked so hard for so long to afford.

I also felt emotional when I thought of the massive numbers of volunteers that flooded the streets today, helping in any way they could. All we ever seem to hear about on the news is the horrible things that people do to each other. Today I felt hope that the vast majority of our city and our state is made up of good people, people who will give up their time, their money, and their belongings to help others. I hope that the spirit we have all felt this week will remain in Brisbane for some time to come, I only wish that it didn’t take a disaster to find it.