Brisbane’s Eddy Delsorte remains incredibly upbeat despite a lack of sleep and the ordeal of his family home being flooded for a second time.
Eddy Delsorte and wife Anne were victims of the 2011 southeast Queensland floods – now their Sherwood home has gone under again.
“The generosity of people has been just unbelievable,” Mr Delsorte, who retired from working for the Archdiocese of Brisbane in 2019, said.
Helpers started arriving from 2pm on Sunday and stayed until 8pm moving goods and furniture out from the house.
“It saved a lot of things we were worried about, but we still had a lot left in last night when we were all just too exhausted to keep going,” Mr Delsorte said.
“Unfortunately some things were just too big – like the pool table and lounge chairs,”
In 2011, the murky Brisbane River floodwaters inundated the Delsorte household completely.
This time, floodwaters reached the front of the house, rose quickly but peaked about two metres below the 2011 water mark.
“The beauty of that is at the moment is that the power controls haven’t been touched – which is great,” Mr Delsorte said.
“It means that once everything is drained out we can turn the power back on again.”
For the moment Eddy and Anne are staying with Good Samaritan neighbours “up the road” – the same people who provided accommodation and support when they evacuated in 2011.
“It’s great when you’ve got friends who make their house open to you,” he said.
“Very faithful people – so it’s great to stay with them.”
After the last flood Mr Delsorte said his family was also taken care of “with the Lord’s provision” – starting with the generosity of daily Mass goers to St Stephen’s Cathedral.
Unlike about 7000 Queenslanders, he didn’t take part in a class action and receive a compensation payout for their flood losses.
“The beauty of this time is that all of us have flood insurance,” Mr Delsorte said.
“Until an (insurance) assessor comes out and has a look at the damage we won’t really know the full impact, but at this stage we’re pretty hopeful that insurance will cover it.”
Mr Delsorte said the latest floodwaters rose “far quicker’ than in 2011”.
The Brisbane River peaked at 3.85 metres, just short of the predicted height of 4metres. Up to 18,000 homes have been flooded across the region.
