WITHOUT WARNING
A MOTHER who died trying to save her children in a flood tragedy on the NSW North Coast two years ago had no warning the road she was driving on was dangerous due to council failures, an inquest into their deaths has found.
Stephanie King and two of her three children, 11-year-old Ella-Jane and seven-year-old Jacob, drowned after their van slid off a muddy road and plunged into the raging Tweed River in 2017.
The sole surviving child, Chloe-May, sat with her father Matt Kabealo as the coroner praised her extraordinary courage in escaping the sinking van and running a kilometre bleeding, barefoot and drenched to the nearest house screaming for help.
Acting State Coroner Teresa O’Sullivan said the then nine-year-old “acted in a way that was brave and clever beyond her years,”
“What a survivor,” the coroner has said.
Mr Kabealo does not want to be seen as a victim, rather a survivor, the Murwillumbah Court was told. “And indeed he is, along with his exceptional daughter,” Ms O’Sullivan said yesterday.
The coroner found the overwhelmed and under resourced Tweed Shire Council failed to close Dulguigan Rd despite significant risks days after ex-Cyclone Debbie caused record flooding in the area.
Several emergency and civilian cars arriving at the scene either skidded uncontrollably or got bogged in the silt, a threat the coroner recommended the council actively look out for.
She also recommended the council consider erecting warning signs on the Tumbulgum road where the crash happened alerting the public to the hazards posed by mud and silt after floods.
Chloe-May’s 43-year-old mum helped her out of the submerged van’s shattered window, had unbuckled EllaJane’s seatbelt and tried to do the same for Jacob before she drowned, the court was told.
“(Ms King) was a wonderful responsible mother… it was entirely reasonable she thought a road now clear of water and open to the public would be safe to drive on,” Ms O’Sullivan said. “It wasn’t.”
The council should consider how to educate the community about a proposed policy change that a road should be flagged as closed until an obvious hazard is removed, the coroner said.
“The council has made a significant effort to address shortcoming in staff levels and procedures,” Ms O’Sullivan said. “More can and should be done to minimise the risk of another tragedy.”
The council should carry out a study to identify hazardous post-flood areas and find mitigation strategies, she said.
Ms O’Sullivan recommended the council’s flood spotter program be expanded, recruiting more volunteers living in critical areas who are contacted by the council for information during natural disasters, including potential mud hazards.
During the three-day inquest former Ambulance NSW deputy director of operations Wayne Mckenna criticised the fragmented, inconsistent and at times inaccurate safety information shared with the public on multiple apps during the deluge, saying there should be one official online source for state and local road closures.
In February the council launched an emergency dashboard on its website to help address this, boosted the number of workers trained to update it and installed 220 metres of guard rail on the river side of Dulguigan Rd, including at the crash site.
The children’s heartbroken dad told police that Chloe-May remembers playing ‘I spy’ with her family in the slow-moving car seconds before his “world collapsed.”
Kristelle Martin was one of the first people to see ChloeMay appear in her brother’s neighbouring driveway dripping wet, shaking, and terrified moments after the accident which happened just before 1.40pm on April 3, 2017.
“I’ve got the little girl here, Chloe… she was in the car, she escaped through the window but she said her mother, her brother, and her sister are in the car,”
Mrs Martin said in a triple-0 call.
“She made it just out of the window in time, she said, before she couldn’t breathe… just before the water took it over.”
Her husband Ryan Martin and her brother Ben Darcy raced to the riverbank and jumped into the freezing water, frantically searching for the car, court documents show.
“The water was so brown you couldn’t see anything,” Mr Darcy said in his police statement.
“It was so deep, I couldn’t get to the bottom.”
Local former police officer Matthew Grinham soon joined the two men, diving down repeatedly until they could no longer see bubbles rising to the murky surface.
Emergency services then took over.