Emergency services personnel who attended the fuel tanker tragedy on the Princes Highway on December 28 have discussed lessons learnt from the incident.
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Police, Ambulance, Fire Brigades, Rural Fire Service and RTA personnel attended the scene of the horrific accident near the Pebbly Beach Road intersection, which claimed four lives.
Truck driver David Carolan, 36, of Narellan Vale and Ulladulla sisters, Makeely, 11, and Jordon Bridge, 13, were killed in the accident and the girls’ father, 47-year-old David Bridge, died on January 3.
The girls’ mother, Debbie Bridge, is in a critical condition in Concord Hospital.
Illawarra emergency management officer Peter Conelius said nothing of any major significance came out of the discussion about how the services worked together at the incident.
“There was a couple of minor things within the organisations that they are looking at,” he said.
“Things like the helicopters were on the ground for a fair bit of time; the ambulance services are looking at that internally to free up the helicopter earlier.”
NSW Fire Brigades duty commander Inspector Chris Bond said the helicopters had responded very quickly, but paramedics had to stabilise the patients before transporting them by air.
Mr Conelius said a positive lesson learnt at the incident was the success of using new fire burns dressings.
Mr Bond said the fire brigade would be looking at a training session with the ambulance service for firefighters to learn how to use the new dressings, and that it was possible fire trucks would carry the bandages in future.
Mr Conelius said the Roads and Traffic Authority would look at how it might better provide information about road closures and road detours to the public, as well as to tourist information centres.