Leaderboard

Mark Gordon Maintenance fitter/welder Employed at the park since 2011 Mr Gordon isn’t aware of any risk assessments that has been completed on TRR. Mr Gordon is also aware of the unload e-stop button. Mr Gordon isn’t aware of whether the unload e-stop was ever checked. Mr Gordon advised he didn’t check the air pressure in the rafts as the air pressure gauge wasn’t available. Mr Gordon stated that he would check the air pressure by stepping on the raft tube to get a rough estimate. Pit and Sherry auditors were in the park on the day of the incident. Mr Gordon believes they were inspecting the wipeout on that day. Me Gordon was shown a photo of the control panel and explained that the e-stop button above the control panel would turn off both pumps and shut the station gates to prevent rafts being dispatched. Mr Gordon doesn’t remember this button being tested. Mr Gordon states the e-stop on the unload station shuts off the pumps, conveyors and every component of the ride. Mr Gordon doesn’t believe this button was tested either. Mr Gordon can’t remember any of the e-stop buttons ever being altered to do a different thing. That was the final witness for this part of the inquest. The inquest shall resume for 2 weeks on October 8th and run to the 19th. The inquest will then resume again for another 2 weeks from the 12th-23rd of November. Thank you for joining me for the liveposting. I shall resume when the inquest resumes in October.

I believe they are urine stains.

Sorry, I got caught up and got to court a little late Peter Gardner Engineering Supervisor Mr Gardner confirmed the ride was built in-house and that if there are any rides with an issue, it should be referred back to the manufacturer but as the ride was built in-house there’s no one to refer back to. Mr Gardner confirmed that e-stops should be labelled. Mr Gardner wasn’t involved with the sensors that was installed at the base of the conveyor. Prior to Mr Gardner’s employment, he believes the motors for the pumps on TRR were upgraded. Mr Gardner is now bringer asked about annual maintenance for TRR. The ride is completely shut down and assessed for any works that need to be complete. If required external contractors could be bought in to ensure the ride meets legislative requirements. An assessment of what is required to bring the ride up to standards is complete prior and during annual maintenance. Preventative maintenance is performed on rides as per requirements from the manufacturer. These assessments and maintenance are completed to assist maintenance staff with figuring out the scope of work required during the annual maintenance. If during annual maintenance, a maintenance team member notices any issues that occur, they will raise that with their supervisor. Mr Gardner confirms spending was available to his department to address safety issues. When a ride is built in-house, all of the components of the ride should have manuals and be referred back to the manufacturer if there are issues. TRR was shut down and de-commissioning began after QPS had commenced their testing in the days after the incident. All the rides and slides were inspected by Pitt and Sherry, an external company, prior to the park reopening after the incident. When the park re-opened, some rides were opened progressively as the external checking and any works required were completed. The checks that were completed inspected every aspect of the ride including the aspheric components. WHS inspectors were regularly onsite to assist and oversee this process along with the maintenance staff and external team. Once these checks were completed by the external company, an international company was then brought in to double check the external companies audits the rides couldn’t be reopened until the external international company had signed off on them. Mr Gardner confirmed that if safety concerns were raised within the maintenance department, it would be send to the supervisors and then sent up the chain from there. Mr Gardner did not assist with previous safety audits prior to the incident, he only acted upon recommendations from those audits. Mr Gardner confirmed that rides should be in line with Australian standards in regards to individual components. The south pump had tripped previously within the week before the incident. Those dates are 19, 22, 23 of October and then twice on the 25th with the third time on the 25th being the time the incident occurred. Mr Gardner confirmed the ride should not have been in service after the second breakdown on the day of the incident. Mr Gardner is unaware if TRR was inspected as part of the Pitt and Sherry review that took place after the incident.

This is why the bill was introduced to bring in the industrial manslaughter laws. Yes they aren't able to come into play here as it's retrospective but it does ensure the right people are held responsible if something like this were to happen again.

I think he is referring to the brown staining on the inside, that follows the water flow. Could it be fine dirt built up in the surface of the slide? Does the fibreglass slowly erode away with the friction from the water and inner tubes?

I guess it depends if you consider it an accident or an incident ;)? Either way I feel Dreamworld will be a housing block in 10 years. I wont be going on any of their rides as long as current park management are involved. I just cant trust them now after seeing all this. It would be a shame to see the park go but how can we trust ardent? Someone else to buy the parks maybe? I worked for ardent in another division in a supervisory role for a few years and I left the company due to rampant cost cutting making my job almost impossible to do properly and leaving me with too much on shift stress. I wasn't in an area that could have caused harm to people so to think they have done this on their parks division is a real worry. Im going to assume its all across the parks now this is coming to light. Its a shame people had to die for it to become public.

I'm a firm believer that accidents are nobodies fault (by definition), and therefore obviously nobody should be blamed or penalised regardless of the consequences of the accident. The problem is that in a situation like this, if there were things Dreamworld could have and should have done which would have prevented the tragedy, and they knew or ought to have known this, then it's not an accident. In that case, those responsible should absolutely be identified and severely punished. Sadly from the inquest so far it seems very clear there were numerous things that should have been done, which would have prevented the horrific outcome. I'm stating the obvious really, but those are my thoughts.

Thanks @Jdude95 for your efforts this week. It was good to get your summary without the media spin. really hope you can make it for the next segment in october!

Nope, it’s a police car at the moment And there have been a couple more additions overnight

John Lossie Senior maintenance team leader Maintenance Electrician. Employees at the park since 2008 Often worked on special projects such as TV’s throughout the park, speakers, wireless receivers. Mr Lossie wasn’t required to train staff but was often called to assist due to his experience. Mr Lossie was often called to assist when his supervisor wasn’t available. Mr Lossie was familiar with park policies and the breakdown procedure. Mr Lossie is retrained in CPR every 12 months. Mr Lossie didn’t have any power to make decisions or changes. Gates were installed at the beginning of the station to prevent further rafts from dispatching if the conveyor has stopped.

Any assumption I've had of how DW run its operations have been crushed.

July 2nd is the school holidays start - seems a logical time to having everything re-open to me

Trust me, there's no way that will go according to plan. Basically find how many days it is planned to be closed for, multiply that by 4 and that's how long it will be shut for.

The Claw today had its 5th push back, now until 2nd July. The Tower of Terror is now closing until 2nd July also. Sword Swings also closed unexpectedly according to maintenance page, opening 2nd July. It's probably best for DW to do that planned maintenance on TOT now as the ride is clearly falling apart.

Alright everyone, here's todays roundup in a neat, easier to read format as usual. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1efAbeRV7gRoXRkHVhrUkhFAcRe9fpiBlUIFXO3gJnJs/edit?usp=sharing I shall see you all tomorrow for the final day of the first part of the inquest. Then we will pick things back up in October where I'll be back live posting updates from the next chapter in the Dreamworld Inquest.

https://paradisecountry.com.au/animals-and-shows/shaun-the-sheep

I'm hoping it would be similar to that Chinese zoo that dresses its empoyees up as animals to practice for an escape scenario.

Thing is something can pass (unless of course it's a Dreamworld safety audio 😛 ) and be bare minimum. Should we running things at bare minimum safety levels to save some dollars when standard industry practices are available at a much higher level? No way! It's very very clear here there were major KNOWN shortcomings in the design, modifications and control systems of that ride, and that even the high level staff seem to have confusion over what did what. That's not ok. The current employees are 100% on the Kool-Aid and have been coached that is clear. You simply CANNOT blame the 2 ride operators in any way for the simple fact that ride operators (no matter how senior as they are still low level front line employees) should never be put into a situation to make literal life or death decisions. The systems should be in place to take those decisions off them. They weren't. They modified the ride to remove the turntable - first thing that allowed the accident to happen They failed to put adequate steps in place to upgrade to a block type system - 2nd thing that allowed the accident to happen They added rails to stabilise the rafts if water dropped - 3rd thing They removed slats to grip the rafts better - 4th thing They removed an 'annoying' alarm - 5th thing They ignored recommendations to upgrade the controls - 6th thing etc etc etc Many of these things were band aid fixes to solve one problem whilst creating another. ANYONE who wants to defend the actions of Dreamworld management in light of all of these things simply is not bing objective I'm sorry.

Yeah I vote for clog the shit out of this thread with info. More the merrier. I cant believe there is still the vibe of defending Dreamworld on here. They have literally done everything not to do, much all tied back go saving a buck. Gaol is where much of the management should be, which is still a lot better than Dead! Which let's not forget us where 4 innocent people are because this park cut corners, went against industry practices and tried to save money as a priority over YOUR safety!

I’m not sure if you are serious or not. You of all people should know that the steam engines were in good condition when they were retired. Not only that but the engines were maintained by a dedicated crew devoted to those engines, and I very much doubt they would have signed off on them every day had they not felt they were safe, after all their lives were at risk.

OK so they had a ride which they knew had an issue that was dangerous, didn't communicate that danger to staff, knew what modifications to make to solve it but didn't do them, removed an alarm which may have given the ops staff a chance to abort the disaster, and didn't train tech services properly. They also lied to the coroner, stopped spending on maintenance, and appeared to have deficient processes in place. That's basically the story yeah? I mean what are you even supposed to say to that? Dreamworld is the only theme park in the world that would actually benefit from an advertising campaign that goes 'Our old maintenance manager, ops manager, CEO and Chairperson of the board are in jail now, it's safe to come back' What's scary about it is the people who modified TRR are the same people who are still looking after things out there. The same people who looked after the TRR also put the cages on the log ride.

Dreamworld has issued a statement after adjournment of Thunder River Rapids ride inquest. Zoomed in so people can read it.