VINNIES volunteers have supplied emergency hampers airlifted to stranded families in Gympie after the Queensland city was swamped by the largest flood in more than a century.
With the Mary River peaking at 22.8 metres on Sunday morning, the highest level since 1893, St Vincent de Paul volunteers packed essential food parcels that were dropped by helicopter to residents in need.
“It has been pretty devastating,” president of St Patrick’s Vinnies conference Desley Neal said.
“Prayers are needed at this time.”
Initially, Vinnies volunteers packed 30 hampers containing tinned food, noodles, cereal, milk and other essentials including nappies, but were quickly called on to provide double that quantity.
They also supplied towels, sheets and blankets as hundreds of residents arrived at an evacuation centre.
“Our shelves are just bare,” Mrs Neal said.
To try and bolster the supply of emergency food and provisions she called out to parishioners attending St Patrick’s Sunday Mass to take whatever they could directly to the town civic centre for distribution.
Mrs Neal said the “mental strain” of this flood would test the community.
“It’s a very dirty flood, and I’ve been here all my life… the rubbish is just horrendous coming down the river, so it’s going to be a very dirty flood to clean up after,” she said.
“After the pandemic and now this on top of it, I think some people will struggle.”
Downstream in Maryborough, rising floodwater is expected to peak in the next few days, with locals filling sandbags and bracing for the second inundation in two months.
A levee erected in the city CBD has so far protected businesses from water damage.
The levee passes through the grounds of Maryborough’s St Mary’s church in the centre of the city.
“The fear is if the water rises over the levee, because the water is still coming,” St Mary’s priest, Fr Lucius Edomobi said.
The church presbytery narrowly escaped floodwaters in January, but Fr Edomobi expects this flood to be bigger.
Fraser Coast Mayor George Seymour said the flood would reach at least 10-metres high.
He said emergency services were stretched a lot thinner than the last flood because disaster had unfolded right across south-east Queensland.
