Broken Hill tragedy: Father and sons killed by generator fumes
A FATHER killed after toxic fumes from a generator filled his cellar had moved into the converted shed at the back of his Broken Hill property only days earlier.
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A FATHER killed after toxic fumes from a generator filled his cellar had moved into the converted shed at the back of his Broken Hill property only days earlier.
Layne Harvey was killed on Thursday — and tragically his selfless sons Kurtis, 16, and Jakeb, 23, died alongside him as they tried to save their dad.
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“That’s the type of family they are, they would’ve jumped straight down there and tried their hardest to help him out,” friend Jake Bourke said yesterday.
Noticing something was wrong with the generator, Mr Harvey climbed through a tiny manhole to reach the 3m x 3m cellar of the shed, which neighbours said he and his wife Cherie were converting and had moved into just two nights before. They had rented out their home on the same property.
Mr Harvey would have had no idea the room had filled with odourless but lethal carbon monoxide.
Worried when her husband failed to return, Mrs Harvey went down to find him. She told neighbours she found him unconscious but she was quickly overwhelmed by the fumes and had to flee. Her sons, Jakeb and Kurtis, then tried in vain to help their father.
“The boys went down to help their dad and they got trapped too,” neighbour Margaret Graham said.
Fitted with breathing apparatus, firefighters struggled to fit through the manhole, which measures about 30cm x 30cm, to reach the family members.
Mrs Graham said it took emergency crews more than an hour before all three were pulled out.
“(Mrs Harvey) said to me herself, ‘My husband is not going to make it, he has been down there an hour and a half now’,” she said.
The trio were rushed to hospital but could not be resuscitated.
Three dead following suspected gas leak in Broken Hill | Sky News Australia https://t.co/zJlsYPTq1R
— Elizabeth Tilley (@liztilley84) June 28, 2018
The deaths have shocked the tight-knit community of Broken Hill, where the Harvey family is well-known. Jakeb was an electrician and a father-of-one who was extremely close to his younger brother Kurtis.
The siblings had recently moved out together and shared a home on the other side of town.
“They were the definition of ride together or die together,” Kurtis’s distraught school friend Maddison said.
Fire crews returned to the scene on Creedon St yesterday afternoon as the cellar — empty but for the generator — was still filled with carbon monoxide. The space, which police said looked like it had been built recently, needed to be cleared before forensic investigators could get inside and figure out what went wrong.
