Dreamworld inquest: Stop button pushed three times ‘but nothing happened’

A TOP Dreamworld ride operator has told the inquest into the Thunder River Rapids tragedy that operating the ill-fated ride required a “greater degree of concentration”.

• Dreamworld tragedy was ‘preventable’, inquest hears
• Hero amid the Dreamworld horror
• As it happened: Dreamworld inquest, Day 1

DREAMWORLD staff will give evidence on the second day of an inquest into the October 2016 tragedy at the Queensland theme park that claimed four lives.

The long-awaited inquest began on Monday in a packed Southport Coroners Court.

FOLLOW LIVE UPDATES IN OUR ROLLING COVERAGE BELOW

Dreamworld disaster victims Cindy Low, Luke Dorsett, Kate Goodchild and Roozi Araghi.

THUNDER RIVER RAPIDS: “ONE OF THE MOST STRESSFUL WATER RIDES”

ONE of Dreamworld’s top ride operators said the Thunder River Rapids ride was “one of the most stressful water rides” to operate at the theme park.

Ride operator Peter Nemeth was the senior staff member working on the rapids ride on the day Kate Goodchild, Luke Dorsett, Roozi Araghi and Cindy Low were killed when their raft flipped in October, 2016, after one of the pumps failed.

During cross-examination by barrister for the Low family, Matthew Hickey, Mr Nemeth told the inquest into the deaths despite working at Dreamworld as a ride operator since 2012 and being one of the top 10 operators, he found working on the Thunder River Rapids ride particularly stressful.

“It was one of the more stressful water rides,” he said.

“There were many things to be on the look out for on that ride.

“I had to look for the pumps … the air pressure to the rafts … the queue lines …”

Mr Nemeth conceded there was a greater degree of concentration needed when working on the Thunder River Rapids ride because you had to make sure people were not jumping the fence or misbehaving in three different lines of visitors.

He also said the noise from the pumps and music added another degree of complexity.

“Compared with the other (rides), the pumps, the music was blaring on that ride …”

The inquest also heard a code-six operational problem was often called in more than three times in a day at the park.

“I remember at the Big Red Car (ride) when I started, I have five or six code six, they were a regular occurrence,” Mr Nemeth said.

The inquest earlier heard it was the policy that if a ride broke down three times in a day that it would be shut down, but Mr Nemeth said he only learnt of this policy on the day of the fatal incident.

OPERATOR: I TRIED, BUT RIDE DID NOT STOP

SHOCKED Dreamworld ride operator Peter Nemeth has told the inquest into the Thunder River Rapids tragedy he pushed the button to stop the ride three times but nothing happened.

Mr Nemeth, who tried to claim privilege against self-incrimination and was compelled by Coroner James McDougall to give evidence during the second day of the inquest into the Gold Coast theme park deaths, said he saw the water level dropping on the ride when he was loading guests into a raft.

“Well, I knew what was happening because it happened a week before when I was operating the ride. One pump stopped and then the other stopped,” he told the inquest.

“It seemed very obvious to me that water level went down and the pump stopped working.”

Mr Nemeth said when he saw the second raft coming down the conveyor belt was about to collide with the raft carrying Kate Goodchild, Luke Dorsett, Roozi Araghi and Cindy Low he pressed the red conveyor-belt stop button.

“At that time I was in a shock situation but I turned around and I pressed it more than once to make sure the raft did not collide with the other ones,” Mr Nemeth said.

“It did not stop even though I pressed it two or three times.

“It did eventually stop but that was after the rafts already collided.

“There was only one button, it was a red stop button and I was pressing the red stop button.”

The court heard Mr Nemeth started his shift on October 25, 2016, the day of the tragic accident, on the Giant Drop and Tower of Terror rides before changing to the Thunder River Rapids ride about an hour before the accident.

Mr Nemeth said when he arrived at the Thunder River Rapids ride he briefly spoke to his supervisor, Sarah Cotter, in the queue, who told him there had been problems with the pump on the ride earlier in the day.

“(She said) the pump has gone down twice and if it happens one more we would have to stop the ride for the day,” he said.

The Thunder River Rapids Ride. Picture: Glenn Hampson

The inquest heard the ride operator later called a code “222” which alerted staff around the theme park of the emergency.

“If a guest is in the water you have to call 222,” Mr Nemeth said.

Counsel assisting the coroner Ken Fleming QC said: “You remained at the control planned to wait for instructions and people from all over the park came to assist?”

“Yes,” Mr Nemeth replied.

Ms Goodchild, Mr Dorsett, Mr Araghi and Ms Low died when their raft flipped on the ride after a pump malfunction.

“I don’t want us to go through those details, only to say one raft went up vertically and there was a disaster after that,” Mr Fleming asked and Mr Nemeth agreed.

Southeastern Coroner, Mr McDougall, compelled Mr Nemeth to give evidence saying he was protected from prosecution and it was “overwhelmingly” in the public interest that he give evidence at the inquest.

The inquest continues this afternoon.

ROLLING UPDATES

4.25pm The inquest has adjourned for the day. It will be back on at 10am tomorrow.

4.22pm Mr Nemeth says Australian Standards relating to rides were never brought to his attention in training at Dreamworld.

4.21pm Inquest is being shown pictures of yet another emergency button in the control room at the Thunder River Rapids ride. Mr Nemeth says: “It doesn’t seem to be attached to anything”.

4.19pm Mr Nemeth says: “The operator have so many things to do... they wouldn’t have time to look behind (the cupboard).” However, Mr Nemeth’s barrister is now objecting to the questions.

4.18pm Inquest is being shown pictures of the control room. “Can I suggest to you it looks quite dishevelled ... it’s a mess,” Mr Hickey says. Mr Nemeth says it’s not always a mess, sometimes they close the cupboard door with the mess.

4.13pm Senior ride operator Peter Nemeth did not know two different stop buttons would stop the Thunder River Rapids Ride conveyor belt in vastly different times.

4.10pm Barrister Matthew Hickey asks Mr Nemeth: “If you had known the emergency stop would have stopped the ride in 2 seconds, you would have been prepared to move that place to stop the conveyer more quickly?” “Yes,” says Mr Nemeth and adds he didn’t know that was possible.

4.05pm Senior ride operator Peter Nemeth tells the inquest he is surprised to hear the emergency stop button could have stopped the ride in two-seconds.

3.41pm Mr Nemeth says the Thunder River Rapids ride was one of the “most stressful” water rides at Dreamworld. He says he was one of the top 10 operators and the noise and queue lines made it stressful.

3.38pm Ride operator Mr Nemeth says it would be normal for a code-six operational problem to happen more than three times in a day, as any as five or six times.

3.34pm Ride operator Peter Nemeth tells the inquest the first time he ever heard anyone say when a ride breaks down three times in a day that it needed to be shut down for the day was on the day of the Dreamworld disaster.

3.11pm Inquest hears ride operator Peter Nemeth remembers the “culture and fun” was the most important message from induction training at the Gold Coast theme park.

3.06pm Inquest hears second ride operator Courtney Williams was trained on the Thunder River Rapids ride the morning of the Dreamworld disaster.

12.56pm Ride operator Peter Nemeth said he pressed the stop pump button the Thunder River Rapids ride even though the pumps had already malfunctioned. He then called the “222” emergency code and “people from all over the park came to assist”.

12.54pm “It seemed very obvious to me that water level went down and the pump stopped working,” Mr Nemeth told the Dreamworld inquest about the day of the tragedy. Says it happened one week earlier and he carried out “shut down” procedure.

Mr Nemeth says on the day of the tragedy he was in a “shock situation” and pressed the emergency conveyor stop button “two or three times”. He says the ride did not stop immediately.

“I don’t want us to go through those details (of what happened) only to say one raft went up vertically and there was a disaster after that,” Ken Fleming QC says.

12.42pm Inquest hears Peter Nemeth started his shift at the Tower of Terror and the Giant Drop rides but just after 1pm he started his shift at the Thunder River Rapids ride – just one hour before the Dreamworld disaster.

Mr Nemeth said he bumped into his supervisor, Sarah Cotter, as he arrived at the Thunder River Rapids ride at Dreamworld. “She told me there had been some water level issues during the day,” he said.

Mr Nemeth said he didn’t know if his supervisor had told anyone more senior about the water-level problems on the ride but told him: “The pump has gone down twice and if it happens one more we would have to stop the ride for the day”.

12.19pm Inquest hears Kate Goodchild was “pulled back from the raft” and tipped into the water. Luke Dorsett also fell off the raft.

“The two children in the raft weren’t thrown out of the raft they remained in place and when it stopped the climbed out of the raft?” Mr Whybrow, for Kate Goodchild and Luke Dorsett asked. “Yes,” says Sen Const. Cornish.

12.22pm Sen Const. Cornish says if ride operator Courtney Williams had pressed the emergency button anytime before the final three seconds before the raft was “dragged into the mechanism” the #Dreamworlddisaster would not have happened.

DREAMWORLD INQUEST: Lawyer for Dreamworld safety GM asks forensic investigator Steven Cornish: ‘Had Courtney Williams pushed the emergency stop button at the unload area 3 seconds before the raft got dragged in to the mechanism this wouldn’t have happened.@couriermail

— Gold Coast News (@GoldCoastBureau) June 19, 2018

12.09pm Inquest hears tests showed the conveyor belt doesn’t stop any faster with rafts on the ride or not. “There is no variation”.

The conveyor belt on the ride travels four metres in the eight seconds it takes to stop once the slow-stop is pressed. It travels at 2.7km/h and takes 42 seconds to run the course of the ride.

Sen Const. Cornish says police did tests of the ride more than 20 times.

12.04pm Ride operator Peter Nemeth said when the single pump failed he noticed the later level almost “immediately”. The water level dropped 200mm in 20 seconds on the Thunder River Rapids ride.

Inquest is told the south pump stopped "well in excess" of a minute before the collision between rafts occurred. #Dreamworlddisaster

— Alexandria Utting (@alexutting) June 19, 2018

Sen Const. Cornish tells the inquest you couldn’t notice the difference between the noise when one or two pumps were running. He says police did not do any noise level readings when investigating the disaster.

11.53am Sen Const. Cornish says he has been involved in investigating up to 10 industrial accidents, but none involved a complex ride like the one involved in the Dreamworld disaster.

Sen Const. Cornish concedes he doesn’t know exactly which planks bowed and hit the raft on the day of the disaster.

11.50am Inquest hears there was a poster stuck in the operators area that detailed emergency slowdown procedure. Three buttons needed to be pressed to stop the ride but it will not stop the conveyor belt instantly, it will take 6-7 seconds.

11.46am The inquest is being shown footage of simulations of emergency stops being tested on the ride. Barrister for Ardent Leisure is asking Sen Const. Cornish how long each stop takes.

“We had video cameras running for hours on end,” he says.

11.34am Inquest hears velcro seat belts on the ride were tested daily for stickiness but there was “very limited information” about the velcro straps that came to light during the police investigation.

11.28am Sen Const. Cornish concedes there was no “earth fault” in the south pump, like happened on the day of the factual accident, during police testing.

“But we weren’t running them all day every day,” he says.

11.21am Snr Const. Cornish is being cross-examined about the technical elements that cause a raft to flip on the Thunder River Rapids ride.

11.03am Sen Const. Cornish tells the inquest all the operational components of the Thunder River Rapids ride were working as they were meant to on the day of accident in 2016.

Sen Const. Cornish says he has “probably viewed it close to 1000 times”, referring to the CCTV of the fatal accident.

The inquest hears police and investigators were never able to completely replicate the flipping of a raft in testing they did after the fatal accident.

“It would grab some of the rubber and let go,” Snr Const. Cornish says of the planks grabbing the rafts.

QUESTIONS OVER EMERGENCY BUTTON DELAY

THE slow-stop emergency button on the Thunder River Rapids ride was not pressed until after a raft flipped and two people had fallen into the water on the day of the tragedy, an inquest into four deaths at Dreamworld has heard.

Kate Goodchild, Luke Dorsett, Roozi Araghi and Cindy Low were killed when their raft flipped on the ride at the theme park in October, 2016, after one of the pumps failed.

During the second day of the inquest into their deaths, being held at Southport Courthouse, Forensic Crash Unit investigator Senior Constable Steven Cornish said after studying CCTV of the disaster, the “cadence” of the slowing of the ride showed that the eight-second stop button must have been pressed.

“It’s looks like it wasn’t pressed until the raft was inverted,” Sen. Const. Cornish said.

Under cross examination by barrister for Luke Dorsett’s family, Robert Davis, the forensic crash officer said it was a “hypotheses” but after analysis of the CCTV and testing the cadence of the ride slow down, it appeared the button was pushed just after 2.05pm, about 10 seconds after the two rafts crashed into each other.

“If the button was pushed it was done ten seconds after the contact of the two rafts?” Mr Davis asked.

“Yes,” Sen. Const. Cornish said.

“Six seconds after Ms Goodchild fell out of the raft?” Mr Davis asked.

“Yes,” Sen. Const. Cornish said.

“Four seconds after Mr Dorsett fell out of the raft?” Mr Davis asked.

“Yes,” Sen. Const. Cornish said.

The officer also told the court if the e-stop button, which would have stopped the ride in two seconds, had been pressed injuries to the four people who died could have been “limited”.

The inquest continues

ROLLING UPDATES

10.30am Counsel for Kim Dorsett’s family, Mr Davis, asks Sen Const. Cornish about why a sensor was not installed at the end of the rapids ride that would have shut down its operation. “A sensor was put at the start … I see no reason why one couldn’t have been put at the end,” he says.

He says if a sensor was set at a threshold that was less than 15 seconds it would have “made a difference” when it came to the fatal accident.

10.25am Forensic Crash Investigator Senior Constable Steven Cornish continues to give evidence this morning. He says CCTV of the incident and tests showed that the slow-stop button was pressed someone during the emergency. About two minutes after the pump stopped working.

He says it’s still only a hypothesis that the buttons was pressed. But if it was, it was not pressed until after the raft was inverted.

The slow-stop button was pressed 10 seconds after the rafts collided, the inquest hears. If the two-second e-stop was pressed it would have “limited some injuries,” Sen Const. Cornish said.

DAY TWO PREVIEW: STAFF TO GIVE EVIDENCE

DREAMWORLD staff will give evidence on the second day of an inquest into the October 2016 tragedy at the Queensland theme park that claimed four lives.

The long-awaited inquest began on Monday in a packed Southport Coroners Court. Cindy Low, Kate Goodchild, her brother Luke Dorsett and his partner Roozi Araghi all died instantly after being thrown from a raft when the Thunder River Rapids ride malfunctioned in October 2016.

Ms Goodchild’s 12-year-old daughter and Ms Low’s 10-year-old son were also thrown from the raft but survived.

The inquest will resume on Tuesday with police forensic crash investigator Senior Constable Steven Cornish continuing to give evidence.

Snr Const. Cornish told the inquest the ride lacked automatic safety features such as a water level sensor which would have prevented the tragedy. He said the correct application of an emergency shutdown button at any time from the failure of a water pump until the rafts collided would have also ensured no loss of life.

The inquest had earlier heard the water pump had failed twice on the day of the tragedy, and there had been multiple previous incidents involving rafts colliding on the 30-year-old ride since 2001.

“The potential for that to happen was always there,” Sen Const. Cornish told the inquest.

“It was evident by the testing we did the rafts could become inverted.”

Dreamworld staff are expected to follow Sen Const. Cornish as witnesses later on Tuesday.