Kiwi the face of flood rescue effort

Tony Young with Montannah Creasy after the rescue. Photo / The Australian

When Kiwi chopper crewman Tony Young pulled baby Montannah Creasy from her flooded town, he was thinking of his own sons.

Now, he has become the face of the Queensland rescue effort.

Warrant Officer Young was photographed holding the cold and wet 13-month-old after evacuating her from devastated Forest Hill in the Lockyer Valley.

"It was bad weather, raining and I saw the town was split in half," the RAAF Black Hawk helicopter crewman told the Herald on Sunday yesterday.

"I thought I was over the ocean there was that much water. We took out about 140 people to evacuation centres in Gatton and kept getting calls to rescue people off roofs and winch them into the helicopter."

As he was loading people on to the helicopter he saw Montannah's grandmother Pat struggling to carry the baby through the mud.

"She couldn't carry her because she kept slipping into the mud. She was having trouble with her heart. I went out and held the child. She just reminded me of my youngest son who is about the same size," he said. Young lives in Toowoomba with his wife Danielle and sons Wylam, 4, and Ryan, aged just six months.

But he was born in Whakatane and grew up in Gisborne, where his parents Rod and Josephine still live. Young spent 10 years in the Royal New Zealand Air Force before moving to the Australian Air Force in Queensland 12 years ago.

He has been flying rescue missions over the water since Tuesday, and was on one of two Black Hawks dispatched to Forest Hill.

He helped Montannah's grandmother on to the helicopter and carried the little girl.

On the ground, Montannah's mother Roslyn Perry was panicking because she had become separated from her mother and daughter.

When the helicopter landed in Gatton, Young was photographed carrying the girl out of the chopper and passing her into the care of police at the evacuation centre. Young then rushed back to the helicopter to return to the front line, to rescue a family of six from a roof in Laidley.

"It was one adult and five children in a two-storey house," he said. "The water had reached the second floor so they had to get on the roof and it was going into dark when we winched them to safety."

Meanwhile, the evacuation centre police officers were able to reunite Montannah with her distraught mum.

And two days later, Young was also reunited with Montannah and her family. This time, he and the little girl were all smiles for the photographer.

"They came out and thanked us for helping," he said. "It was good to see them dry and well."