Blasts drew out best in rescue crew
ADAM Pearson thought the first explosion was bad. But then came the second and it was so terrible he knew the firefighters – his mates – that he had followed to a truck accident outside of Charleville had to be dead.
Mr Pearson, the first cop on scene, and the fireys should all have been killed by the massive truck explosion – it was felt 30km away – but miraculously they lived to tell the tale.
It’s a story the long-time Gold Coaster hasn’t told until now, too overcome with emotion and post traumatic stress disorder to even return to work, let alone recount the harrowing details of that night exactly a year ago.
Mr Pearson was heading home when he saw the fire trucks heading to where a truck carrying more than 50 tonnes of ammonium nitrate had crashed on Mitchell Highway at Wyandra, about 30km south of Charleville, around 9.50pm
The forensic cop knew from the police radio the truck was carrying ammonium nitrate – a chemical used in fertiliser that becomes explosive in certain circumstances. His mates didn’t.
“They didn’t know what they were heading into.
“Me, having known what we were heading to, not able to contact them – that’s one of the things that’s played on me.”
Mr Pearson pulled up behind two trucks just 160m from the crashed vehicle which had gone down an embankment.
Diesel spilling from the vehicle mixed with the fertiliser, forming a highly explosive compound. When the vehicle caught fire it triggered the massive explosions that destroyed a two-lane concrete bridge, wrecked vehicles more than 1km away and caused a shockwave that was recorded as a 2.0 earthquake by seismologists.
Investigators said it was sheer luck they all survived.
“If we had been in any other positions we would have been killed,” he said.
Mr Pearson was knocked unconscious in his car but miraculously came to, turning round and making his way to help.
With his fellow officers they set up a cordon and began piecing together the enormity and devastation of the situation when out of the darkness at the explosion site appeared a light.
“All of a sudden out of the darkness we see this tiny little light and we all look at each other thinking, ‘There’s survivors’. “It was a torch.” Mr Pearson is a finalist along with the fireys Jake Sullivan, Clinten McCarthy, Peter Hackwood and Nathan Thompson for the heroism category in the Pride of Australia Awards.
Voting for the people’s choice winner closes tomorrow and can be done online at goldcoastbulletin.com.au/prideofaustralia