HE BRAVED the eye of Cyclone Debbie to fill the Proserpine water tower on Faust St.

Why? "Because as a team that is part of who we are,” Alan McDonald said.

"We provide an essential service and people are lost without water. That was the motivation.

"It's just something that clicks in automatically, you don't even think about it.”

Leading a team of 11 with the water and sewerage department of the Whitsunday Regional Council, Mr McDonald took another worker, Brett Smith, and made sure the town's elevated reservoir was full.

On the Tuesday Debbie touched down, Mr McDonald waited for the lull in the storm and made a mad dash, in the relative calm, to manually operate diesel- powered generators used to fill the water tower.

"We made sure that nothing else was damaged so we could plug them (generators) in and get them going,” Mr McDonald said.

Until water was restored, the team worked from 7am until sometimes 10pm.

One member of the team who could get to Airlie Beach when the rest of group was stranded by flood water slept in his ute at the council depot so Mr McDonald could get in contact if he was needed.

"It's the things the boys do,” Mr McDonald said.

No stranger to tropical storms, Mr McDonald was in Proserpine when Cyclone Ada hit, killing 12 people, in 1970. He said Cyclone Debbie's power rivalled that of Ada.

It would have been easy for Mr McDonald to bunker down, plug in the generator and play Candy Crush on his phone but "that is not the way we roll,” he said.

Mr McDonald offered the highest praise for his team and said he was proud of the crew in the face of serious adversity and even danger.