‘Baby was swept from her pregnant mother’s arms’

A HERO helicopter pilot has spoken of his horror after he rescued a pregnant woman only to discover she lost grip of her baby only moments earlier.

Mark Kempton turned to look at the woman he’d just rescued, expecting to see joy in her face but instead was met with unspeakable horror. Only seconds before she had been dragged to safety, she’d lost her grip on her baby, snatched away by the unrelenting brown torrent that hit Grantham, Queensland.

Kempton doesn’t want to be branded a hero, even though he risked his life as his own wife and children were being evacuated from their flooded home. His rescue work alongside his crew saved the lives of 28 people.

“It doesn’t matter how many people you save, you always want to get someone else — one more — and that’s really frustrating,” he told the Herald Sun through tears.

“The pregnant mother was originally hanging on to her child in the water, but sadly it was swept from her arms.

“I looked over my shoulder and saw her sitting on the floor of the aircraft, and she was just devastated.

“It was heartbreaking.

“We are very grateful that we saved all those lives, but very sad for the ones that we couldn’t.”

Meanwhile, an Australian tugboat pilot became a local hero after he steered a runaway 300-tonne concrete walkway to safety when floods turned it into a floating missile.

Churning floodwaters that swamped Brisbane ripped the massive riverside walkway, a major city landmark, free of its moorings, sending it hurtling down the river overnight towards boats, bridges and pontoons.

“We saw a very large section of the Riverwalk come around the bend. The first very large section scraped the dock... (where) there were some boats,” the captain, Doug Hislop, told Brisbane’s Courier-Mail newspaper. “The second absolutely obliterated it.”

But as the huge chunk of concrete threatened two bridges and key industrial sites, the plucky tug driver braved the fast-flowing water to guide it longways under bridges and past vessel moorings.

“I think everybody thinks that the ‘little tug who could’ made a remarkable effort,” said Queensland state premier Anna Bligh, referring to a popular children’s book.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the tug driver saved lives.

“Without him steering that 300-ton piece of concrete away from boats and pontoons, we would have seen that debris go into the river system and possibly into flooded areas.”

Brisbane region harbourmaster Captain Richard Johnson told commercial television the tug had guided the boardwalk safely past infrastructure including chemical and fuel wharves and an oil pipeline.

“We had to start assisting it and they did an absolutely fantastic job taking it right through the centre of the Gateway Bridge without touching anything at all,” he said.

Brisbane’s residents are still coming to terms with the devastation.

Nick Turnbull’s two-story Brisbane home sits three-quarters submerged in floodwaters swamping riverside suburbs across Australia’s third-biggest city.

“Stuff’s everywhere — kids’ toys floating on brown, dirty brackish water,” the 38-year-old police detective said from the suburb of Graceville, one of more than 60 Brisbane neighbourhoods inundated by the worst floods since 1974. “It’s a real dengue- fever breeding ground for mosquitoes. A good place to avoid.” Turnbull’s family joins thousands preparing to clean up after what Queensland state Premier Anna Bligh described as a disaster of “post-war proportions.”

Essam Al-Quraishi, 36, who moved his wife and seven-year-old son from Baghdad four months ago, fled his ground-floor apartment in the suburb of St Lucia two days ago. They’ve lost all their possessions, he said from an evacuation centre at the Brisbane show grounds.

“My son came from the political chaos in Iraq,” he said. “He thought ‘my misery will end’ and now he is in shock.”