Brian Patrick SCAYSBROOK

‘Forever In Our Hearts’

FIRE MEN GAGGED OVER CRITICAL QUAKE REPORT
by Mark Riley, senior police reporter

Firemen have been threatened with instant dismissal if they comment on a leaked report critical of police handling of the rescue operation at Newcastle Workers Club after the December 28 earthquake.

The report, leaked to a Sydney radio station yesterday, said earthquake victims could have been saved had it not been for the police’s ‘confusion and bungling’ during rescue attempts.

Newcastle Fire Brigade District Officer Bob Tait, who is also president of the NSW Fire Brigade Employees Union’s Newcastle branch, said yesterday he could not comment on the report because of the threat that he would be sacked.

‘ Many of the critical comments in the report are believed to have been attributed to District Officer Tait. ‘

The fire brigade inspector for Newcastle and the Central Coast, Insp Tony Hunt, was reported in The Newcastle Herald on February 2 as having told a rescue services debriefing session at City Hall the previous day that firefighters had not been used to their full capacity at the club.

Mr Tait told the debriefing that he was the first rescue official on the scene.

A rescue officer, Mr Gerard Buchtman, said in the same Herald report that he had been ‘frustrated’ by police who refused to allow him into the club to use a heat-seeking camera to locate trapped people.

He said he was eventually allowed in at 1.30pm, some three hours after the earthquake, and within 15 minutes had found one body. He later found where two others were buried.

The controversial fire brigade report is based on transcripts of comments made at a fire brigade debriefing session at Newcastle Fire Station two days after the earthquake and had been sent to the Sydney office of the Chief Officer of the NSW Fire Brigades, Mr Bill Reay.

It criticised police for:

— Ordering rescue personnel out of the rubble for
15 minutes while victims were still trapped
inside;

— Not allowing fire brigade personnel to use heat-
seeking cameras to search for survivors, then
later using less-sophisticated cameras and
asking firefighters for help in working them;

— Acting too slowly in co-ordinating rescue
services;

— Driving through the city ‘like cowboys with
sirens blaring and almost causing multiple
accidents’.

The Minister for Police, Mr Pickering, referred the report yesterday to the State Coroner, Mr Waller, who has expanded the terms of his coronial inquiry to examine its complaints.

‘I am not in a position to accept these untested statements,’ the Minister said.

‘Up until this morning I was of the view … that everyone was very, very pleased at the level of service provided in Newcastle by all the emergency service organisations. ‘

The Commissioner of Police, Mr Avery, said he had heard ‘nothing but complimentary remarks’ about the performance of all emergency organisations in Newcastle.

But the Chief Officer of the NSW Fire Brigade, Mr Reay, while expressing regret at the release of the document, stopped short of giving his full support to the police actions.

Newcastle police operations commander Insp Brian Scaysbrook defended yesterday the co-ordination of the rescue operation at the Workers Club by the Newcastle patrol commander, Insp Ian Cleary.

‘Insp Cleary was told that there was a risk of an aftershock and that a section of the collapsed building above where the rescuers were working could collapse,’ Insp Scaysbrook said.

‘He ordered everyone out of the basement section of the club and then reorganised them into teams of four and six, to go back in as the situation demanded.’

‘What he was doing was coordinating a rescue effort which at that time was very unco-ordinated.’

The officer-in-charge of the Newcastle Police District, Chief Supt Russ Cook, said yesterday that he could not comment on the specifics of the report because it was now subject to a broadened inquiry by Mr Waller.

Ambulance paramedic Mr Malcolm Martin, who headed a team of paramedics, said the allegations were ‘totally unwarranted’.

‘I reject the statement that the police bungled the operation,’ he said.

‘It was one of the most efficient rescue operations I have been involved with.

He firmly rejected accusations in the fire brigade report that more lives could have been saved by a better coordinated operation.

‘Everything that could be done was done for those people who died in the club,’ he said.

‘The fact that they died was entirely due to their injuries and not to any element of human negligence or error.’

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