Mining magnate Clive Palmer has criticised the government's flood response after he was forced to save his staff using a company helicopter.
Mining magnate Clive Palmer used his company helicopter to save 19 people stranded by floods | Courier Mail
MINING magnate Clive Palmer has criticised the government's flood response after he was forced to stage his own rescue effort with a company helicopter.
Mr Palmer said he ordered his company chopper to rescue 19 people from floodwaters in Moore, near Kilcoy, after the State Emergency Service didn't respond to calls for rescue.
The 19 included three staff members at his Lowood horse breeding facility, who became stranded on the farmhouse roof after flash floods swept through the property on Tuesday afternoon.
``An extra metre and it would have got them. They were very lucky - they should have got a quicker response,'' he said.
``The important lesson is we need fast reaction times and not slow ones.''
Mr Palmer said his staff had become stranded around 2.30pm when a wall of water washed through the property.
The workers took the horses into barns and made their way to the roof of the main house, where they put a rescue call into the State Emergency Services.
More than 12 hours later, after the SES still hadn't responded, Mr Palmer took matters into his own hands and ordered the company helicopter out of its base at Caloundra to go pick the three men up.
``I made the call at four in the morning to get our guys in because we were worried they'd drown,'' he said.Mr Palmer said on the way back to base, the pilot noticed another group of 16 people, including children, waiting for rescue on the roof of a local school.
``They'd been waiting for a day for an evacuation too, so our chopper went back and shuttled them all off,'' he said.
Mr Palmer said his staff and the other evacuees were lucky that they had access to a private helicopter, after the SES failed to show up.
``There must be stories out there of people that didn't have that,'' he said.
He said the current government resources available for search and rescue were inadequate to deal with a disaster of this scope, and the government should instead have a fleet of light choppers that can land on rooves to rescue people directly.
``I don't mean to criticise anybody really, but I think the government in the future should spend more money on choppers and less money on roads,'' he said.
``I think we need probably 10-15 in the state.''
He said he personally had lost around $1.8 million of farm equipment and about 20 horses had drowned in the flash flood.
``I don't think that really matters as much as the human life,'' he said.
``That's got to be the priority for the community, and the government and everyone.''