Arena bombing 999 crews ‘did their best’
MANCHESTER Arena terror survivor Erin McDougle has insisted the 999 teams did all they could on the night of the outrage.
Erin, from Newcastle, was among the people at the Ariana Grande concert when Salman Abedi detonated a suicide bomb in May last year.
A total of 22 people died and hundreds were injured. Among those killed were Liam Curry, 19, and Chloe Rutherford, 17, both from South Shields, and Philip Tron, 32, and Courtney Boyle, 19, both from Gateshead.
Erin, who was at the gig with a friend, said it was a traumatic experience for everyone involved and an incident that no-one would have expected.
The 21-year-old, a student at Northumbria University, added: “It was a unique and extraordinary set of circumstances. No-one would have been expecting anything like that.
“Bearing that in mind, I think everyone dealt with it quite well.
“I remember a quick response from the emergency services. From the time it happened to when I was able to get out, there were armed police outside and lots of people helping out. There were 14,000 people who would have been trying to get out. Noone can ever be really prepared for this type of thing.”
Erin said that when she returned to the North East she received an email from her university offering to provide any help she needed.
Her comments come after an independent report into the emergency response to the terror attack was published yesterday.
The review was commissioned by Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham and chaired by Lord Bob Kerslake, the former head of the civil service.
The report highlighted numerous things that went well and felt “the story of the response is overwhelm- ingly positive”. However, a number of serious issues were also raised and recommendations were made to improve things for the future.
It was said the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service (GMFRS) was “outside of the loop” of the police and ambulance emergency response to the incident.
While paramedics and armed police were on the scene of the attack within minutes, the fire service was in ‘paralysis,’ according to the report.
Frustrated crews, many of whom had heard the blast from their citycentre post, were instead sent away to a station in Beswick, three miles away, only to later be sent back into town again amid confusion.
“Strategic oversights” by police commanders led to confusion over whether an “active shooter” was on the loose, and poor communications between Greater Manchester Police and the fire service meant fire crews only arrived two hours and six minutes after the bombing.
The document says: “There is not one single reason nor one individual that caused this failure. Rather, it was a combination of poor communication and poor procedures.”
Vodafone, which holds the national Home Office contract for emergency post-disaster hotlines, also came in for criticism.
The phone system experienced a ‘catastrophic’ technical failure on the night that meant no fully-functioning phone number could be set up for desperate people in search of information. The report says: “This failure was a cause of significant stress and upset on the night to the families involved, who were seeking to find out more about the situation of their loved ones. A number were reduced to a frantic search around the hospitals of Greater Manchester to find out more.”
The 226-page document also highlighted issues around mental health services.
It said the terror attack left many people with ongoing problems, for example being unable to return to university or loss of employment, ongoing fear of crowded places and a range of anxieties and diagnoses such as post-traumatic stress disorder.
It added: “Many respondents described how they did not know what support was available or how to access relevant provision or whether how they were feeling was a normal response.
“Some people told the panel about the specific therapeutic or counselling intervention which they had been able to access. Others have been supported through more informal services. It was apparent that some of the support provided did not meet respondents’ needs.
“Some participants paid privately to get the support they needed and some had employers who paid.”
In addition, some parts of the media were heavily criticised. People talked about feeling ‘hounded’ and ‘bombarded’ by reporters.
After the report was published, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service apologised for events.
Dawn Docx, interim chief fire officer, said: “The 22nd May 2017 was Greater Manchester’s darkest hour and it is clear that our response fell far short of that which the people of Greater Manchester have a right to expect. I apologise unreservedly for that.
“There were clearly failures in leadership and poor decisions made. As a result firefighters themselves, desperate on the night to attend the incident, were also let down by their senior colleagues.”