Video: Queensland floods: “The government left us for dead”

Part 1 of an interview with Marty Warburton in Grantham

By Richard Phillips

4 February 2011

In this video Marty Warburton, a local petrol station owner in Grantham, a small Lockyer Valley community about 100 kilometres west of Brisbane, explains the devastating flash-flooding that engulfed the small Lockyer Valley settlement on January 10. Warburton explains his narrow escape and the human toll exacted by what locals describe as an “inland tsunami”.

Thirty-five people have been killed in floods that have hit Queensland since December 2010—nine of these from Grantham and another 13 from other parts of the Lockyer Valley and Toowoomba areas. Residents were given no official warnings of the impending disaster but fought heroically to save those caught in the raging torrent.

In Part 2, Warburton speaks about the inadequate government response to the disaster and being threatened with arrest by police if he attempted to speak with Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Queensland Premier Anna Bligh when they visited Grantham in late January.