Disasters bring out best and worse

This article was published in The Sydney Morning Herald 16 January 2011

An engineering company that makes equipment for army vehicles is ransacked. Two men are disturbed breaking into a convenience store. Three people are charged with stealing from boats. There are reports of shops, restaurants and abandoned homes being targeted.

In each case the crime scene is Brisbane. In each case the thieves come and go by water.

Such brazen acts of piracy are part of a mini crime wave of looting to hit south-eastern Queensland in the aftermath of the floods.

As Premier Anna Bligh said, ''There's nothing lower than profiting from the distress of your neighbour.''

Yet from unimaginable scenes of death and destruction have emerged a million good news stories. Of the heroes such as Ken Otto, 62, who saved his parents Fred, 86, and Veen, 84, when the floods came to Grantham, by strapping them in lifejackets and tethering them to a backyard shed.

Ordinary people doing extraordinary things.