Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a first responder, you wear the uniform and carry the tools to deal with an emergency, but in a natural disaster it's the community, without the uniform, that rises around you to help you. The Goomeri community joined police, SES and fire and rescue, risking their own lives searching for a 14-year-old, young Krystal Cain, after she and her father were swept away in a once-in-a-lifetime flood near Booubyjan, on the way to Krystal's grandmother's house.

When someone goes missing in a torrent 10 metres deep, in raging floods, it quickly becomes evident that it's not a search for a survivor. Survival and safety overrule normal workplace health and safety. You're exhausted and wet and you don't know what you will find, but you do what needs to be done. In the city, you often go years without knowing who your neighbours are. In the country, particularly in remote localities, relationships with neighbours are forged partly by necessity, in preparedness for times like this.

On behalf of Wide Bay, I would like to recognise those brave and determined people who left their own families to venture into the flood affected territory to search for Krystal and those who looked after Krystal's father, Lenny, who suffered a heart attack while clinging to the tree with his daughter, before she was tragically swept away.