As the clean-up begins in Goodna, people whose homes went under are asking for help.

Four days after an engorged Brisbane River forced its way into the streets and homes in Brisbane’s west, residents returned to see what was left of their homes.

It was a confronting sight combined with a putrid smell.

“We’re just trying to wrap our heads around it,” resident Lauraine Ormond said.

Like many Queensland homes, hers is raised off the ground, but the flood was so severe, it came up through the floorboards and took several days to subside.

LIVE UPDATES: Read our blog for the latest on flooding in NSW and QLD

While murky water lingered at the height of the windowsills, furniture lifted, appliances tipped over and belongings floated around the house.

Lauraine Ormond feared water had damaged her much-loved roll top desk.(ABC News: Mary Lloyd)

What Ms Ormond and her partner Fergal returned to was a chaotic shambles of destroyed possessions caked in mud.

And the prospect of having to clean it up.

Ms Ormond said they and others like them could not do it alone.

She said they needed gumboots, work clothes, cleaning products and people to help.

“People’s [help is] the big thing because we’ve got lots of heavy stuff,” she said.

With help, Lauraine Ormond cleaned out and rebuilt her flooded house in 2011.(ABC News: Mary Lloyd)

She knows a thing or two about recovering from a flood.

In 2011, their house was entirely submerged, then cleaned out and rebuilt by volunteers.

But she acknowledged this time was different because now they have their nine-year-old granddaughter living with them.

“It’s hard walking back into everything gone, especially her stuff,” Ms Ormond said.

Lauraine and Fergal won’t bring their granddaughter to the house until it’s cleaned up to spare her the trauma.(ABC News: Mary Lloyd)

They have decided to spare her the trauma of seeing the house as it is.

Instead, they plan to spend the hours when she is at school removing everything that’s ruined, hosing the mud out, and beginning the rebuild.

Help is on the way

With devastation still fresh in Goodna, volunteers were yet to mobilise en masse.

But willing helpers were trickling into Parker Street, while the ABC was there.

Matt Grommen planned to work all day helping Lauraine and Fergal, then return the next day to do the same .(ABC News: Mary Lloyd)

Matt Grommen had turned up to get his boots dirty helping Lauraine and Fergal haul debris out of their home.

“I just drove past the place and stopped and asked if they want a hand,” he said.

“I think people would do the same if it was my place.”

Kristy MacGregor said once they cleared the mud from under her house, they would disinfect upstairs and downstairs.(ABC News: Mary Lloyd)

Two doors up, Kristy MacGregor was grateful to have a small army of her own kids to clean up.

Between her property and Woogaroo Creek nearby, several homes were submerged, one up to its roof. 

On the higher end of the street, some houses escaped unscathed.

It’s those worse off she turned her mind to.

Houses at the lower end of Parker Street suffered the worst damage.(ABC News: Mary Lloyd)

“Plenty of my neighbours haven’t been as lucky as what we have been,” she said.

By lucky she meant the water only swamped the underside of her house, destroying much of what they had stored there, coating everything else in mud, and permeating her home with a filthy stench.

“It’s disgusting,” she said.

Survivor’s guilt

In the 2011 flood, water reached the top of her roof.

Because she lost so much then, she acted quickly this time.

“I had people to help me to get my things out, other people didn’t have that,” she said. 

On Saturday, she called on family to help ferry everything she could from the house, then sat up the road anxiously watching the water rise.

It peaked at a height 30cm below her floorboards and she suffered sunburn.

Kristy MacGregor said the smell from the mud left behind from a flood can hang around for years. (ABC News: Mary Lloyd)

Talking to a friend on the phone, she described herself as feeling survivor guilt.

“I’m feeling pretty bad because my neighbours in the street, we rode it out together last time,” she said. 

“Their houses have gone under again and mine is sitting here high and dry.”

High, maybe, but under the house was still very soggy as her kids dragged tools, machinery and damp belongings out into the sun.

Among them, vinyl records and family photos sealed in polystyrene boxes that Ms MacGregor thought must have floated in the floodwater.

She had not seen them for six years.

Kristy MacGregor hopes to find pictures of her late mother among the photos discovered when cleaning up. 

“To find these and to find that the water hasn’t even touched them … is beyond amazing,” she said.

As for the things they couldn’t salvage or scrap, Ms MacGregor was confident the council would remove anything left on the curb.

But she did have one request from them: skip bins for the street’s residents to empty their fridges into.

With the power off, foul fridges were starting to rival the stench power of the mud.

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Originally Appeared Here