DREAMWORLD UPDATE Witnesses share their harrowing stories
Traumatised staff speak at the inquest into the deaths of four people at Dreamworld
Speaking at the second stage of the coronial inquest into the harrowing Dreamworld tragedy which killed four people in October 2016, the theme park’s “broken” former safety officer Shane Green told the court that even the world’s leading surgeons couldn’t have saved the victims from their grisly fate.
The experienced paramedic, one of four safety officers suing the park for psychological trauma, was one of the first to arrive on the scene after a pump stopped working on the popular Thunder River Rapids Ride, causing water levels to drop and a raft to become stuck on the conveyor belt on Oct. 25. The raft was hit by “raft five” carrying Cindy Low and her 10-year-old son; Kate Goodchild and her 12-year-old daughter; Goodchild’s brother Luke Dorsett and his partner, Roozi Araghi. It flipped backwards, instantly killing the adults onboard. “In all honesty, if you’d had the world’s leading cardio-thoracic surgeons, neurosurgeons and trauma surgeons with all their equipment, nothing would have changed the outcome,” Green told the inquest at the Southport Coroners Court on the Gold Coast on Oct. 10.
Miraculously, the two children managed to escape but were forced to watch their mothers die in what has been described as Australia’s worst theme park disaster since seven people perished in Luna Park’s Ghost Train fire in 1979.
During the first five days of the second stage of the inquest, Dreamworld’s first-aid safety teams – many of whom have since left the park – described what they saw when they arrived at the horror scene, while nurse Rebecca Ramsey spoke of her frustration of being “fobbed off” by Dreamworld management after requesting out-of-hours training for staff prior to the tragedy.
Last week, grieving family members and witnesses faced further delays when lawyers for the park’s sister company, Ardent Leisure, handed over 1000 new documents to the coroner, meaning witnesses who have already given evidence could be recalled. “This cannot go forever,” barrister Matthew Hickey, representing the family of Cindy Low, said. “The families of those whose lives have been robbed are entitled to know what happened.”
On Oct. 12, the court also heard an attractions supervisor, Jason Johns, sent an email to a park engineer in May 2016 seeking advice on the possibility of simplifying the emergency shutdown procedure on the 30-year-old ride from a four-button to a “one-button” exercise.
Then, on Oct. 15, the inquest was shown a report that said the lack of a water level sensor on the ride was the “primary cause” of the accident. The report, by Safety Related Control Systems, said the sensor would have cost only as much as $3000 to install.
As the inquest continues, Tina Ibraheem, a solicitor for Green, Ramsey, fellow safety officer John Clark and engineer, Paul Burke, said her “broken” clients were struggling to move on with their lives. “They are struggling,” she said on Oct. 9. “Our clients saw exactly what happened to those poor people and they have to live with those images for the rest of their lives.”