Qld:Grantham survivors' turn at inquiry

AAP General News (Australia)
04-27-2011
Qld:Grantham survivors' turn at inquiry

By Gabrielle Dunlevy

TOOWOOMBA, Qld, April 27 AAP - Survivors from "ground zero" of Queensland's floods
have told an inquiry into the disaster of their grief and frustration at the lack of warning.

The Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry has turned its sights to the January 10
flash flood of the Lockyer Valley, west of Brisbane, which killed at least 17 people.

Of those, 10 were from the township of Grantham. Another three have never never found.

Grantham service station owner Marty Warburton showed the commission photographs he
took while waiting on his roof to be rescued, showing the sudden wave of brown water.

His statement to the commission recalls his horror when he saw two bodies float past
and a house with people screaming from inside.

Mr Warburton questioned why there weren't more helicopters for the rescues.

Another resident, Bronwyn Darlington, said the town could have been warned.

"They had two hours to at least send one vehicle out to Grantham with a siren going
so people knew it was something out of the ordinary," she told the inquiry.

"It may have saved one more life."

She said police who cordoned off the town while they searched for bodies treated residents
"like children".

But Assistant Commissioner Steve Gollschewski told the inquiry it would be "unconscionable"

to allow a resident to find a body, or be at risk of injury from the debris.

"I just could not, ... in my conscience, allow a member of the Grantham community go
back in there and find a deceased person or one of their loved ones," he said, adding
that one victim was found on the fourth search of an area.

Mr Gollschewski also offered an olive branch to the family of Toowoomba flash flood
victims Donna and Jordan Rice.

The final calls of the mother and son were last week played for the commission, prompting
an angry outburst from Ms Rice's husband and Jordan's father, John Tyson.

Mr Tyson said Mr Gollschewski had assured him Ms Rice was calm in the call during a
January meeting at his home.

But the inquiry heard Ms Rice being criticised by the triple-zero operator for driving
through floodwaters, and a second call from Jordan, in which Ms Rice and her younger son
Blake, who survived the flood, can be heard screaming.

Mr Tyson also alleged that Mr Gollschewski had banned him from speaking to the media
about the phone calls, now the subject of an internal investigation.

But Mr Gollschewski on Wednesday told the inquiry he wasn't aware of the second call.

He hadn't played the tapes in January because it would be insensitive just 17 days after
the event, and he didn't think it was lawful.

It was understandable the conversation would be blurry to a grieving man, he said.

"I just think what happened last week was unfortunate and I certainly wish it hadn't
been conducted that way," he said.

Commissioner Justice Catherine Holmes denied a request from counsel for the Queensland
government, Alan MacSporran, to play the police recording of the meeting between the pair,
as the transcript would be made public.

She also requested Mr MacSporran seek instruction on whether the presence of Crown
Law representatives when the commission interviews public servants wasn't "apt to stifle"

their accounts.

The inquiry continues in Toowoomba on Thursday.

AAP gd/cdh

KEYWORD: FLOODS INQUIRY WRAP

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