Paramedic Colleen Gibson, who was the first emergency responder to arrive on the scene, is also said to have failed to tell police and fire crews who arrived shortly after her that Saffron Cole-Nottage was within a crucial 30-minute time period when her life might still be saved.
Giving evidence today, Ms Gibson said she had been involved with four previous water incidents before Ms Cole-Nottage's but she hadn't been trained to take command of a multi-agency emergency.
And clearly, unless you are training people to do something, or better yet, recruiting those of that persuasion, you can’t expect them to step up and do it when needed
The two-week inquest into the death of Ms Cole-Nottage has already heard how a 999 operator didn't establish the mother-of-six was at risk of drowning due to the incoming tide until seven minutes into a call with the teenager who raised the alarm.
The emergency services are always telling us how ‘every second counts’ but when it comes down to the crunch, you’re at the mercy of people unable to act as if it really does.
Police bodycam footage showed officers who arrived shortly afterwards asking Ms Gibson if anything could be done to save Ms Cole-Nottage and she replied: 'No.'
Why did she say that? Well, that’s a very good question to which the answer was…
Questioned by inquest counsel Bridget Dolan KC about why she didn't tell emergency services colleagues that the opportunity to save the patient's life potentially extended for another 10 minutes, she said: 'I don't know.'
Imagine that - knowing where she is and that she’s giving evidence in an inquest, she couldn’t even come up with a plausible reason! This is not someone who fears for her future job, it seems...
When Ms Dolan told her police 'said that if they'd been told a rescue was possible they would have tried', she added: 'I don't believe that to be safe. I wouldn't be able to reach down into the rocks head-first with the water.' Ms Dolan replied: 'Nobody is saying you should have tried. The police have said if they knew there was a possibility of rescuing Saffron they would have tried.'
You can almost imagine the frustration in her voice, can’t you? How did someone get to be a paramedic while being so clueless and hapless?
Expert witness Matthew England, a nurse and paramedic who sits on a group that advises the Home Office about emergency services working together on incidents, said Ms Gibson should have taken command of the scene as the first responder there. She should also have communicated with Coastguard, police and firefighters there but it 'did not appear very coordinated in terms of what was going on', he added.
You don't say!? And it's not just the on-scene responders who failed:
The 999 call was placed at 7.52pm but it was not until 7.59pm that the call handler established how quickly the tide was coming in. Christopher Strutt, a call handler team leader, told the inquest the fire service should have been contacted by the ambulance service within seconds when it was known that someone's head was trapped. But he said controllers had to go through an algorithm, asking questions prompted by their computer, and were discouraged from raising their own queries until the list was completed. The revelation prompted coroner Darren Stewart to suggest the 'rather clunky' system had contributed to a 'muddled response'.
God forbid anyone uses their own initiative!
Now. there's often a fair amount of 'Monday morning quarterbacking' anout inquests, it's true. But sometimes, they throw a harsh light on policies and procedures that hamper, and not help. Although this one hasn't concluded yet, I'd venure to suggest it already has done so, and not to modern Britain's benefit.
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