Dreamworld employees sue the park for distress caused by fatal 2016 accident

Posted | Contributed by Jeff

Dreamworld staff who were first on scene at the Thunder River Rapids ride tragedy are suing the theme park for the psychological trauma they suffered in the wake of 2016 incident. Safety officers John Clark, Shane Green and Rebecca Ramsey, along with engineer Paul Burke, will file a statement of claim against their former employer for "significant psychological injuries".

Read more from Radio New Zealand.

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What are the safety officers' duties here? Do they have strong enough ground to sue the park, and does the engineer not have any liability? I imagine in the worst case (this case), this is what a safety officer would run into if their duty is to report to incident scenes. Also, if a liable party is identified, they should be the ones sued. Finally, I wonder what the investigation turned up when it came to determining whether or not this was a predictable scenario. Have empty rafts been stuck before? So many questions...

The title safety officers and engineers is an interesting one. Safety officers imply the people who were in charge of keeping things safe and engineer sounds like the bloke in charge of the rides maintenance. The reality is closer to it being the first aid and park nurses, and the engineer was a fitter and turner, or someone who does metal work. This isn't the fellow who designed the faulty system or the people who oversaw deficient training.

The reality is those people doing their normal jobs, through no fault of their own were exposed to hopeless situation with 2 mangled bodies and 2 drowned victims and were put in a situation where they had to deal with it, with the victim's families there without training. Seriously you try and jump into water that's cloudy from all the blood. If you'd seen what they've seen and been through that you'd be f'ed up too.

Finally there has been an inquest into the disaster. Search #dreamworld in twitter. Some of what has come out is truly disturbing. The fitter and turner mentioned in the above article hasn't been called to give evidence so isn't considered to be of importance in the cause, and the other first responders have been called but it's clear from the evidence that there was nothing they could do.


Joz - Power, in tune with nature!

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