The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Mother recalls day she was told her son drowned in quarry
Backs call for post-incident reviews to prevent further tragedies
A mother whose son died at a disused quarry in Fife has called for rigorous post-incident reviews to be conducted to prevent further tragedies.
Gillian Barclay made the plea during a Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) water safety conference in Edinburgh as she recounted what happened to her 18-year-old son Cameron Lancaster at Prestonhill Quarry, Inverkeithing, in August 2014.
Cameron’s death was the first of two at the quarry in the space of 10 months, with 18-year-old John McKay from Kirkcaldy losing his life the following June.
Mrs Barclay said: “I had assumed an investigation or review would have taken place with one sole purpose – to look at measures to prevent accidents happening again but I soon realised this type of review doesn’t happen at a multiagency level.”
She continued: “If a full risk assessment had been made, maybe Prestonhill Quarry wouldn’t have taken another life.”
Mrs Barclay said she had been “blissfully ignorant” about water safety as a teenager growing up on the Solway coast.
Cameron was an experienced Scout, well versed in safety measures, who had assured his mother about him taking “calculated risks”.
However, Mrs Barclay brought many in the audience to tears as she described the “limbo” the family was forced to go through as search teams worked to recover her son’s body.
She said: “I was happy and I was in the garden with my youngest son when three grey looking men suddenly appeared.
“The look on the men’s faces changed everything in an instant and I was told very gently that Cameron had entered the water but had not surfaced.
“I can’t remember much after that, although I remember there were loads of scary looking officials everywhere.
“None of the officers wanted to tell us Cameron was already dead and it was the most hellish limbo anyone can imagine.”
Mrs Barclay added her belief that families should be given more opportunities to discuss the circumstances behind the loss of their loved ones.
“We need to understand what happened to move forward,” she explained.
“I felt an awkwardness from police and fire officers to talk to me at first, but as I got to know them through doing this I challenged some perceptions.
“I think rescue personnel perceive grieving families as wanting to blame someone but I certainly don’t.”
She added: “We need to challenge risk-taking behaviour in young people and we need to take it a lot more seriously.”
With Scotland suffering a disproportionately higher number of drownings per head compared to the rest of the UK, Tuesday’s conference was to promote the work of Water Safety Scotland to reduce water-related deaths by 50% by 2026 and feed ideas into Scotland’s draft response to the National Water Safety Forum’s UK Drowning Prevention Strategy.
Errol Taylor, RoSPA deputy chief executive, said: “The big challenge for us is to actually empower people to enjoy water without suffering the dire consequences that can happen.”
Anyone wishing to contribute to Scotland’s draft response on drowning prevention can do so here.