Teenage girl gets electric shock near Sydney light rail site
Transport authorities say Sydney pedestrians are safe after a teenage girl received an electric shock on the weekend believed to be linked to an exposed wire near the city light rail project. Fifteen-year-old Anna Lambden was injured at Haymarket on Sunday near a light rail construction site when she took off her uncomfortable shoes and walked towards the train station in wet socks, according to her mother, Viola Morris.
Passersby who tried to help the teen were also shocked when they touched her, Morris wrote on social media.
“It sounds like there was some dodgy wiring from the tram construction and it connected with the ground which connected with Anna’s wet socks,” she wrote.
Morris posted a photograph on Facebook on Monday of herself and her daughter in Royal Prince Alfred hospital, saying the incident could have been “catastrophic”.
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The Transport NSW deputy secretary
Tony Braxton-Smith says the
site is safe and investigations are
continuing.
“I can assure people that there have been teams on site to make sure the site is electrically safe. It’s a very unusual incident and we are taking it extremely seriously and we want to get to the bottom of where the cause is and make sure things like that don’t happen again,” he told 2GB on Tuesday.
NSW Labor’s deputy leader, Michael Daley, says the state government’s “already disastrous” light rail project has now become a “dangerous disaster”.
“Gladys Berejiklian needs to get her safety auditors on site, en masse, this morning,” he said on Tuesday.
He blamed the government’s previous cost-cutting to the NSW roads and maritime and transport agencies. “They don’t have the capability to have project managers of their own on site any more, and this is what happens when you cut budgets,” he said. Morris said her daughter has been discharged from hospital and was “in lots of pain” but that’s “settled to muscular pain now”. The Roads and Maritime Services is investigating after its workers identified an exposed wire at the site.