Smudger105e
Member
Read this article in the Star (I know!!) today
LANDSLIDE GIRL DIG DELAYED 3 HOURS BY HEALTH AND SAFETY
RESCUE workers did not start digging for Charlotte Blackman for three hours on health and safety grounds after she was crushed to death by a landslide.
The 22-year-old teaching assistants family watched in agony as a 30-strong team of firefighters waited for the all-clear from a geologist.
Charlottess dad Kevin and boyfriend Matt Carnell desperately tried to dig through the 35ft pile of rubble with their bare hands in a bid to save her, until a second landslip forced them to flee.
They then watched from the top of the cliffs with Charlottes mum Rachel, sister Sinead, 20, and brother Mitchell, 12, as rescuers with heavy lifting equipment and diggers arrived at the scene.
Charlotte, of Heanor, Derbys, was strolling along the beach during a family holiday in Burton Bradstock, Dorset, when the cliff collapsed.
Her body was found at 9.40pm, nine hours after the landslide.
A 48-year-old witness, who asked not to be named, said: It seems strange to me that they had all the gear but had to wait for a geology expert until they could do anything."
It seems to be about health and safety all the time. "
How many people would have been removed from the rubble in the Blitz if there was health and safety back then?
Jacki Witt, 48, from Maidenhead, Berks, said: If they put an announcement out for people to come and help there would have been teams of people there.
But Dorset Fire and Rescue Service Group Manager Mick Stead said it was not safe for rescue workers to attempt to free Charlotte immediately because the cliffs were unstable.
Instead, sniffer dogs walked over the mass of rock to try to locate her body.
Mr Stead explained We have assessed the risks to the emergency workers and it is a question of trying to balance the rescue operation against the risk to us.
The Blackman family had been camping at Freshwater Beach Caravan Park, just 400 metres from the scene.
Firstly I would like to say that I really feel for the Family and the young woman, what a terrible terrible way to meet your death, and she didn't live too far from me either, which also brings the tragedy home.
But, I really want to point at what I consider the sensationalist reporting by the Daily Star. The tone of the article is, in my opinion, that the emergency services were prevented from extracting the woman's body by Health and Safety. Damn right!! She was under some 400 tonnes of rock, and how would the family have felt if more cliff fell down and crushed a number of people trying to remove her body?
I think that although sometimes people take Health & safety to the nth extreme, but that in this situation the decision to wait was the right one.
Discuss!!
LANDSLIDE GIRL DIG DELAYED 3 HOURS BY HEALTH AND SAFETY
RESCUE workers did not start digging for Charlotte Blackman for three hours on health and safety grounds after she was crushed to death by a landslide.
The 22-year-old teaching assistants family watched in agony as a 30-strong team of firefighters waited for the all-clear from a geologist.
Charlottess dad Kevin and boyfriend Matt Carnell desperately tried to dig through the 35ft pile of rubble with their bare hands in a bid to save her, until a second landslip forced them to flee.
They then watched from the top of the cliffs with Charlottes mum Rachel, sister Sinead, 20, and brother Mitchell, 12, as rescuers with heavy lifting equipment and diggers arrived at the scene.
Charlotte, of Heanor, Derbys, was strolling along the beach during a family holiday in Burton Bradstock, Dorset, when the cliff collapsed.
Her body was found at 9.40pm, nine hours after the landslide.
A 48-year-old witness, who asked not to be named, said: It seems strange to me that they had all the gear but had to wait for a geology expert until they could do anything."
It seems to be about health and safety all the time. "
How many people would have been removed from the rubble in the Blitz if there was health and safety back then?
Jacki Witt, 48, from Maidenhead, Berks, said: If they put an announcement out for people to come and help there would have been teams of people there.
But Dorset Fire and Rescue Service Group Manager Mick Stead said it was not safe for rescue workers to attempt to free Charlotte immediately because the cliffs were unstable.
Instead, sniffer dogs walked over the mass of rock to try to locate her body.
Mr Stead explained We have assessed the risks to the emergency workers and it is a question of trying to balance the rescue operation against the risk to us.
The Blackman family had been camping at Freshwater Beach Caravan Park, just 400 metres from the scene.
Firstly I would like to say that I really feel for the Family and the young woman, what a terrible terrible way to meet your death, and she didn't live too far from me either, which also brings the tragedy home.
But, I really want to point at what I consider the sensationalist reporting by the Daily Star. The tone of the article is, in my opinion, that the emergency services were prevented from extracting the woman's body by Health and Safety. Damn right!! She was under some 400 tonnes of rock, and how would the family have felt if more cliff fell down and crushed a number of people trying to remove her body?
I think that although sometimes people take Health & safety to the nth extreme, but that in this situation the decision to wait was the right one.
Discuss!!
