$5m compo: Dreamworld staff ‘haunted relentlessly’ by tragedy
Fifteen traumatised Dreamworld staff who witnessed the deaths of four people at the theme park in 2016 have shared in $5 million in compensation, Supreme Court documents reveal.
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A former Dreamworld medic who dived into the water in a desperate bid to save Thunder River Rapids ride victims has received the biggest share of more than $5m in compensation payouts to traumatised staff at the Gold Coast theme park.
Shane Green, who was Dreamworld’s first-aid officer when the disaster happened, has been paid $700,000 for psychological injuries he suffered in the October 2016 disaster which left four tourists dead.
The $5.01m in payouts to 15 Dreamworld employees have been revealed in a Supreme Court lawsuit by the theme park’s owners against the engineer who certified the Thunder River Rapids ride as safe to operate just a day before the tragedy.
The payments range from $110,000 paid to maintenance planner Grant Naumman – who told the Dreamworld inquest there had been “a total failure by everybody” to identify safety issues – to $700,000 given to first-aid officer Mr Green.
A decorated former police officer and paramedic, Mr Green has previously spoken of the horror he and his colleagues witnessed and his heartache at being unable to save the people who died on the ride.
“People were yelling and screaming, it was really like something out of a disaster movie,” he told The Courier-Mail last year.
He said he had been “haunted relentlessly” by the deaths of Canberra tourists Kate Goodchild, her brother Luke, his partner Roozi Araghi and NSW woman Cindy Low after he and others tried desperately to save them.
Mr Green told the Dreamworld inquest that not even the best doctors in the world could have saved the four.
“In all honesty if you had had the world’s leading cardiothoracic surgeon, neurosurgeons, traumatic surgeons in that place at the exact time it happened and with all their equipment nothing would have changed the outcome,” he said.
Two other first-aid officers, John Clark and Rebecca Ramsey, received a total of $500,000 in compensation.
The main Thunder River Rapid ride operator Peter Nemeth was paid $400,000 while rookie controller Courtney Williams – who the inquest heard had been given just 90 minutes of training – received $260,000.
Ms Williams told the inquest that she would have pressed the emergency stop button on the ride if she had known what it would have done.
“I would have done everything I could to save them,” she said.
Dreamworld owners Ardent Leisure were fined $3.6m last year after pleading guilty to workplace health and safety charges which followed a scathing Coroner’s report into the tragedy.
In a Supreme Court claim seeking damages for negligence and breach of contract, Ardent has alleged that engineer Tom Polley was to blame for the tragedy after certifying the ride as “mechanically and structurally safe to operate”.
Mr Polley is defending the action, alleging Ardent is totally responsible.
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