OUR AGONY NEVER ENDS
by Jonathan Brocklebank Alison Hume’s death in a disused mineshaft was a tragedy her father knew he would never get over. And then came the torture of seeing the man he blames getting promotion
DAYS before Alison Hume died, she called the man she had always known as Hugh and told him she had reached a decision. ‘I’ve been thinking about it and I think you’ve earned it,’ said Mrs Hume. ‘If you have no objections, I’m going to start calling you Dad.’
Hugh Cowan’s eyes redden at the memory as he sits at home in Ayr next to his wife Margaret. To graduate from ‘Hugh’ to ‘Dad’ 16 years after coming into his stepdaughter’s life meant the world to him. Tragically, the new arrangement never had time to bed in.
On July 26, 2008, 44-year-old Mrs Hume plunged 45ft into a disused mineshaft late at night near her home in Galston, Ayrshire. It was a dreadful accident which left her severely injured and crying for help at the bottom of the pit, which had started to fill with water. But it was completely survivable.
Yet, at 9.30am that day, some seven hours after Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Service vehicles arrived at the shaft, Mrs Hume was pronounced dead. Her rescue had been a disaster.
Former police officer Mr Cowan, 73, may not have been Mrs Hume’s natural father. But no father could have striven harder during the years which followed to get to the truth of what went wrong, to bring those at fault to account and to ensure it could never happen again.
His quest took a toll on his health and brought sleepless nights as his mind whirred with information he found impossible to set aside. A mountain of files, documents and correspondence grew in the home he shares with his stepdaughter’s mother.
All of which explains his correspondence this week with Alasdair Hay, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) chief officer. He wrote to Mr Hay with a question: why does his service keep promoting the man whose decisions that night in 2008 may have cost his stepdaughter her life?
He is referring to Paul Stewart, whose progress through the ranks continues apace. In 2014, there was a plum role leading fire prevention at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. The following year brought a promotion to area manager for the service’s training college in Cambuslang, Lanarkshire, with a salary of £55,000. His latest step up takes him to £83,000 and the role of deputy chief assistant officer with responsibility for training.
Mr Cowan and his wife shake their heads at the bitter irony – a top training role for a fire officer who was severely criticised by a sheriff
for thwarting a life or death rescue mission by ‘fundamentalist adherence’ to health and safety procedures and then instigating a ‘bullish’ campaign of ‘self- justification’.
In Mr Cowan’s letter to Mr Hay, he says he was outraged to learn of the promotion.
He continues: ‘It is quite clear to me that you still have no conception as to the failings of this man on the night and his apparent lack of knowledge regarding the abilities and skills of the people under his command, his complete disregard for the opinions of others with vastly more experience in the job than he.’
Much has changed since 2008. Strathclyde Fire and Rescue no longer exists, subsumed along with all other regional brigades into the new national service SFRS.
Attitudes, insist some of Mr Stewart’s colleagues, have changed too. Lessons have been learned. Is Mr Stewart to be pilloried for ever, they ask.
One colleague told the Mail: ‘It’s not something he has been able to move on from. He lives with it every day. He’s a good guy who has dedicated his life to saving people and I don’t think that’s come across in the past. He was dealing with very difficult circumstances that night and it turned out horribly wrong.’
That the outcome was catastrophic, no one disputes. But it is also evident that Mr Stewart did not need to be in charge of the rescue. He was supposed to attend the scene as a media officer. Instead, he took command of the operation, imposed his will on it and, in all likelihood, drastically affected its outcome.
LAWYER Mrs Hume was taking a short cut across a field to her home after visiting relatives when she plunged into the mineshaft. She was found shortly after 2am by the elder of her two daughters, Jayne, then 17, who started looking for her when she could not reach her on her mobile phone.
The first Strathclyde Fire and Rescue vehicles had arrived by 2.30am and, shortly after 3am, firefighter Alexander Dunn was lowered into the hole using ropes. Mrs Hume was badly hurt, but conscious. While Mr Dunn was able to give her blankets and oxygen, she clearly required urgent medical help, which was on its way.
By 3.25am, a second firefighter, group commander Fred Howe, had taken charge of the operation and, with paramedics now also in attendance and advising him that Mrs Hume’s survival was ‘time critical’, he resolved to get her out.
Mr Howe later recalled: ‘To be honest, I wanted Mrs Hume out of there by any means we safely could. That is what I joined the fire service for.’
The first step was to find a volunteer paramedic to lower into the shaft to assess Mrs Hume’s condition. Martin Galloway instantly stepped forward.
But now Mr Stewart became the third officer in charge at the scene. He held the same rank as Mr Howe, yet was technically his superior. Noting that he was the most senior figure present, he assumed control – with calamitous results.
Here, the tenor of the operation changed completely. What began as an ‘old school’ rescue by men committed to saving lives, even if it entailed some personal risk, turned into an operation hopelessly compromised by slavish adherence to rules and regulations unsuited to the realities of emergencies.
Mrs Hume’s plight was an emergency. But she was left screaming in agony at the bottom of a mineshaft because a bureaucrat was now running the show 45ft above her.
Mr Stewart stopped paramedic Mr Galloway being lowered into the pit. He declared, furthermore, that if he had been in charge at the time, Mr Dunn would not have entered the shaft either. Sizing up the situation, he ruled – erroneously – that the 18 firefighters present lacked the training to carry out the rescue. The fire service did not have the ‘remit’ to do it either, he decreed. It was a job for the Strathclyde Mountain Rescue Team.
Hours passed before they arrived. Mountain rescuers are not full-time emergency service officers like firefighters or the police. They are volunteers who are called at home. As they pulled Mrs Hume out of the shaft shortly before 8am, she suffered a heart attack brought on by hypothermia. She was taken by air ambulance to Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock – but it was too late.
Watching the operation from 150 yards away that night were Mr Cowan and Mrs Hume’s mother Margaret, now 72. Ironically, both had been greatly reassured by the firefighters’ attendance. They thought she could not be in safer hands.
‘When I saw the firemen, I thought “brilliant”,’ said Mr Cowan. ‘I had no qualms about those boys, they would get her out. Whatever was needed, they would do it.’
But the fire service was changing. Health and safety regulations now loomed ever larger in rescue operations. Where once rank and file firefighters would unhesitatingly place themselves in danger to save a life, now their superiors commanded caution.
Nowhere was this tension more apparent than in the mission to save Mrs Hume.
Yet, at a fatal accident inquiry (FAI) in Kilmarnock, Sheriff Desmond Leslie’s findings were unequivocal. Had rank and file firefighters been allowed to do their job and bring Mrs Hume out, she could have survived. Instead, he said, her death was ‘accelerated’ by rulebook fundamentalism.
Almost eight years after Mrs Hume’s death, the Cowans recognise they must move on.
So too does Ian McEwan, Mrs Hume’s natural father, to whom she remained devoted. ‘I’ve tried to get justice,’ he said recently. ‘But I feel I’ve come to the end of the road.’
But letting go is harder, say the Cowans, when the man they believed precipitated Mrs Hume’s death is steadily rising through the ranks.
They see his promotions as ‘insensitive and uncaring’. They say it is as if his bosses are endorsing the rigid, bureaucratic ethos which produced such tragic results in 2008.
MR Cowan said: ‘He has progressed through the ranks without, it would appear, having done anything of note. Going by his attitude at Galston and the FAI, if this man is going to be in any way involved in training firefighters of the future, the service may have to consider dropping the word “rescue” from its logos and vehicles. It’s quite clearly a word not near the top of his priorities.’
The acidity in his tone is informed by years of battles and too few victories. Mr Cowan says he was staggered to learn, days before the FAI, that none of the first three officers in charge on the night of the rescue had even been approached to make a statement to the Crown.
The only senior officer who had done so was group commander Billy Thomson, who, ultimately, took charge at the scene but did not reverse any of Mr Stewart’s decisions.
‘The FAI was days away from being a joke, a complete farce, with most of the main protagonists not giving evidence,’ said Mr Cowan.
Once the inquiry was under way, a
lawyer found a cheque from the Cowans to firefighter Mr Dunn, who had been lowered into the shaft that night.
‘She was waving it about in the middle of the court, shouting, “What’s this? What’s this?” said Mr Cowan. ‘She was actually trying to make out we’d bribed the man.’
In fact, the cheque was a donation to a widows and orphans fund for firefighters – raised by well-wishers at Mrs Hume’s funeral.
Further disappointment came in 2013 when the Cowans learned that, despite the sheriff’s damning verdict, there was no hope of prosecuting either the fire service or Mr Stewart and Mr Thomson, the two officers who had been singled out for criticism.
So the focus of the Cowans’ battle had to shift. They want legislation making rescue services accountable for the operations in which they are involved. They also want total clarity as to who is responsible.
Most of all, they want to know what happened to Mrs Hume could never happen again.
Commenting on Mr Stewart’s promotion, an SFRS spokesman said: ‘All nine deputy assistant chief officers were appointed following a robust, transparent and competitive recruitment process.
‘Today’s firefighters respond to a far wider range of incidents than in the past and the new national service is determined to ensure our crews throughout Scotland always have the skills and equipment needed for any emergency they face.
‘Following the launch of the Scottish service, we conducted a review of all specialist resources to improve the protection afforded to every community.’
Mr Hay has offered to meet the Cowans – and some who care about them and recognise their need for closure believe it may be the best way forward.
But tears are rarely far away when the couple think back to that dismal night.
Mrs Hume should have survived it – and that knowledge still brings great sadness and bursts of anger. Forgiveness may still be a way off.