Ex-staff to seek compensation for horrific scenes they witnessed when they responded to malfunction that killed four people

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The panicked voice saying there was a “raft in the conveyor” of the Thunder River Rapids ride was Dreamworld employee Nigel Irwin’s first indication something disastrous had happened at the theme park.

On Tuesday Irwin told the inquest into the deaths of four people on the ride he was manning the Gold Coast park’s communication hub on 25 October, 2016 when he received a call about a medical emergency on the 30-year-old ride.

Outside the inquest came revelations some former staff plan to take legal action against the park’s parent company.

The inquest is being held into the deaths of Cindy Low, Kate Goodchild, her brother Luke Dorsett and his partner Roozi Araghi at the Southport coroners court. The four visitors died when the ride malfunctioned and two rafts collided.

Irwin told the inquest he simply heard a panicked voice say “I’ve got a raft in the conveyor”.

Only when he looked at CCTV footage and saw a raft on its side did Irwin realise something serious had occurred.

When first aid officers told him to call an ambulance and they had at least one person who was unconscious and “turning blue”, Irwin was the man to call triple zero.

As he made the call, Irwin upgraded the emergency to a “222 emergency” – the park’s most serious emergency code.

“It basically means we have something terrible going on,” Irwin said in a statement to police that was shown to the inquest.

Irwin said everyone had acted as swiftly as they could. “Unfortunately there was just nothing we could do when we got there,” he told the inquest.

The safety officers Shane Green, John Clark and Rebecca Ramsey and the engineer, Paul Burke, have engaged Shine Lawyers to sue the theme park. Tina Ibraheem, a solicitor who is representing the four, said they were broken.

“They are struggling,” she said on Tuesday. “Our clients saw exactly what happened to those poor people and they have to live with those images for the rest of their lives.”

Ibraheem said all four had left Dreamworld and were receiving counselling to deal with their psychological injuries.

Clark, Ramsey and Green are due to appear at the inquest on Wednesday.