FRIEND TELLS INQUEST OF RAVENSHOE BLAST VICTIM’S DYING WORDS
“I’M really hurt”.
With these dying words, Nicole Nyholt lay in her friend’s arms after she bore the brunt of a deadly fireball in the Ravenshoe cafe explosion.
She had horrific burns to 80 per cent of her body. Her throat was scorched after she’d inhaled the flames.
“Her skin was pink, translucent, eyebrows singed,’’ friend Nicola Baker told an inquest into the 2015 tragedy yesterday. “She said: ‘I’m really hurt, Nic. I’m going to pass out. And she started having difficulty breathing’.”
Ms Baker broke down in tears as she told how she found her best friend fighting for life after a car ploughed into a gas tank and detonated a fireball inside the packed cafe in the freak accident on June 9, 2015.
Cafe manager Ms Nyholt, 37, a married mother-of-two, was flown to hospital in Brisbane, but died of her injuries.
Margaret Clark, 82, a “sweet, old soul” and mother-of-seven also died, while 19 others were badly injured by the 2000C heat of the gas explosion.
Driver Brian Scutt, a wellliked local stockman who died last year, reportedly had a seizure before his out-of-control Toyota ute smashed into the Serves You Right cafe in the Far North Queensland town.
Butcher Steven Jensen was in his shop 150m up the road when he heard “a massive bang” and felt the pressure of the shockwave, the inquest heard. He ran to help and saw victims “with no hair left, most of the skin gone, clothes torn off, still smoking”.
“You couldn’t put a face to a name, you couldn’t tell who they were. No clothes, skin missing, hair missing,’’ he said.
He helped pull Mr Scutt from the 4WD embedded in the brick wall. He tried to go into the burning building to find others, but it was “too hot; a lot of flames and heat was coming out of there”.
Coroner Nerida Wilson yesterday heard evidence from police investigators how Mr Scutt had no prior traffic history but when asked on his driver’s licence renewal form about if he had been diagnosed with epilepsy or experienced a seizure, he had ticked “No”.
Findings of the inquest will rule on whether it be mandatory for medical practitioners to notify transport authorities if they find a person unfit to hold a driver’s licence because of “illness, impairment or disability”.
The inquest continues in Cairns on Monday.