The day she can’t forget

IT was the look on the paramedic’s face that told Senior Sergeant Brooke Flood ( pictured above) that things were bad, that this would be a day they weren’t likely to forget.

She was not long out of the academy, working in a small Queensland town. She would learn that working in regional communities meant you often saw people you knew.

You’d attend fatal crashes to discover you knew the victim. On this day, she knew the paramedic. She knew he had children.

“A four- year- old girl was struck by a car getting off a school bus,” she said.

“I remember looking at his face and just knowing. The mum was there. She’d actually witnessed it happen.

“It was just everything. It was trying to attend to the mother, trying to keep her calm. Trying to attend to the driver of the vehicle, who wasn’t at fault. She was only a young girl, just 19 or 20. It was trying to shield the young girl, to give her some dignity from people looking. There are so many things that you are required to do.”

The little girl died on the way to hospital.

Of all the crashes on all the country roads Sen Sgt Flood has seen, that’s the one that stays with her.

It’s a frustrating business, she said, where they are constantly confronted by the results of people’s carelessness.

“I find that unless people are directly affected, they don’t think about ( road safety),” Sen Sgt Flood said.