Fatal ride footage too awful for viewing

SOME family members of Dreamworld tragedy victims chose to remain in court to watch “awful” footage of the incident that took their loved ones’ lives.

Others, however, couldn’t face the vision and waited outside until court reopened.

“The video wasn’t shown to the public because of the sensitivity of it,” Counsel assisting the coroner Ken Foster QC told reporters yesterday. “It’s awful footage no matter how you look at it … it is simply not for public consumption.”

The court was closed for 10 minutes as the CCTV footage of the Thunder River Rapids Ride on October 26, 2016 was played at the inquest into Cindy Low, Kate Goodchild, her brother Luke Dorsett and his partner Roozi Araghi.

Mr Foster said the footage ran for three or four minutes leading up to the incident.

He said it was “necessary for our purposes” to see the footage to put the incident in perspective to the evidence given at the inquest.

The Queensland Coroners Court heard electricians at Dreamworld had repeatedly raised concerns about the jumble of wires inside the main control panel of the Thunder River Rapids Ride.

An expert’s report after the tragedy described the wiring as a “rat’s nest” and said it posed a real risk of serious malfunction.

Park electrician Francoire De Villiers said the description was apt and he had understood the wiring was to be upgraded before the tragedy occurred. “I notified (supervisor Scott) Ritchie every time we did preventative maintenance,” he said.

Colleague Quentin Dennis told the inquest the wiring matter had been brought up with supervisors “multiple times”.

Mr De Villiers, who had received a final written warning for a safety breach on the park’s log ride weeks before the tragedy, had dealt with an earlier pump malfunction on the ride on the day of the fatal incident.

That was one of three separate pump failures he’d worked on in the five days before the tragedy.

A third failure of the south pump on October 25 contributed to the disaster, causing water levels to drop dramatically and a raft to become stuck on the ride’s conveyor.

The raft containing the victims collided with the other raft and flipped into a vertical position, causing at least two of the victims to be flung into the machinery.

The inquest also heard from a former Dreamworld employee who described witnessing a similar incident in which four rafts collided on the ride over 15 years before the 2016 tragedy.

The inquest continues today, with more hearings set for October and November.