About Real People True Stories

Real People True Stories is a floodsafe awareness social media campaign that uses people’s real stories to raise awareness about the risk of entering floodwater.

These “survivor” video stories present the actual people recounting and re-enacting their real life experience of their decisions about entering floodwater, what happened and the consequences of their actions.  The 6 stories highlight the dangers and risks associated with entering floodwater.

A range of resources have been produced to support these stories.
There are:
Social media tile - which have a still photo with messaging.
Word Videos – 15 second grabs from the video
1 minute video – an abbreviated version of the 3 minute video
3 minute video – tells the whole story.
Plus a range of other videos.

The stories are:

Always that unknown risk. By Sonya.
Sonya is a mother who crossed a flooded river causeway in her 4WD, due to peer pressure from the passengers in the car - her four children.

Plan Ahead. By Peter
Peter is a farmer, who nearly drowned after entering floodwater to rescue cattle but was saved by his son; sadly his pet dog drowned.

A costly decision. In more ways than one … By Tom
Tom, a young man that drove through floodwater to impress his girlfriend.  His car was a write off and a few weeks later his girl “dumped” him.

Go the long way. By Jaime
Jaime is a mother that turned around based on a fear of putting the lives of her children at risk.

A split second decision. By Tor
Tor nearly drowned when she decided to enter floodwater at an intersection which was flooded due to flash flooding. She was keen to get home. That was more than 20 years ago. She still doesn’t feel good when it rains.

It never occurred to me that it could have been us. By Alicia
Alicia went out shopping with her two young children one morning. It had been raining very heavily for the past few hours- flash flooding was occurring on the urban streets of where she lived. She found herself in her car with the water up to her car bonnet. She was one of the lucky ones - her and her children survived.


There are also two further stories:

“Mad Matt” a YouTuber and 4WD enthusiast shares his experience and knowledge

and

David King, a SES volunteer, who responds to triple 000 callouts when people are
either caught or missing in floodwater.

The final video is a montage of community people pledging not to enter floodwater themselves or encourage a driver to do so.