http://www.theaustralian.com.au/archive/news/lost-schoolboy-ridiculed-by-000-staff/story-e6frg6no-1225699718405
AFTER becoming hopelessly lost in the NSW Blue Mountains, schoolboy David Iredale made six desperate calls to the 000 emergency service.
But even though he told them he was struggling to stay conscious, the ambulance officers who took the calls treated him dismissively, with one even ridiculing his predicament.
The 17-year-old, who had become separated from his two bushwalking companions, is believed to have died soon after making the calls, but his body was not found for more than a week.
Yesterday, at the inquest into his death, the head of the Sydney call centre for the NSW Ambulance Service Peter Payne was forced to admit the three operators who took David’s calls on December 11, 2006, were sarcastic, abrupt and uncaring towards the Year 11 Sydney Grammar student. The operators also failed to accurately record vital information given to them by David and failed to pass those details on to the police.
Call operators talked over the boy when he was trying to describe his situation and put him on hold with no apparent explanation several times. One of David’s calls lasted for more than five minutes and another for four minutes, but in none of the five calls he made to the Ambulance Service — he had initially made one call to police — did an operator ask for his name or his phone number.
His calls were also incorrectly recorded as not requiring further action.
When David told an operator he had “no idea” where he was, the female call taker sarcastically replied: “OK, so you wandered off into the middle of nowhere?”
David’s mother Mary Anne Iredale wept quietly in the public gallery of the court as Mr Payne acknowledged the gross failings of the operators who spoke to her dying son.
Under sustained cross-examination from counsel assisting Jeremy Gormly SC, Mr Payne admitted that the behaviour of the women operators on the day had been worthy of disciplinary action and agreed that sarcasm from a triple-0 operator was “inappropriate”.
The court heard that one of the operators spoke to David twice within a space of eight minutes but transcripts of the calls appear to indicate she had no memory of the first call.
On his second call to this operator, the boy told her: “I am lost, I need water, I have not had water for a long time”, but she cut over him, demanding once again to know what suburb he was in.
Another operator put him on hold for more than 20 seconds and then came back and asked him the same questions she had asked before.
Mr Payne blamed a lack of appropriate training for the women’s insistence on obtaining a street address above all else, even though the boy repeatedly said he was lost in the bush.
The NSW Ambulance Service, which has unreservedly apologised to the Iredale family for its failings, drafted new protocols to deal with emergency calls from remote, isolated or difficult locations in 2008 and yesterday provided another revised copy of the protocol to the court.
The inquest continues.