Jacob Schriek
The person who took an emergency call about a man who
died during last year's Motatapu Icebreaker mountain bike event
made several errors and caused delays, a coroner's court was
told yesterday.
Jacob Schriek (55), a Riversdale police officer, died after
suffering chest pains on the Golspie Burn track during the
50km race from Glendhu Bay near Wanaka to Arrowtown, through
the high country station of singer Shania Twain, on March 14
last year.
Inspector Warren Peter Kemp investigated how the 111 call was
treated.
He said the police communications call taker took too long to
verify the location even after being given co-ordinates and
other land locations, held on to the event for seven minutes
before entering it into the system, failed to ask the
condition of the patient and was unsure of what information
to ask.
"She has had her blinkers on and gone down a path of
destruction," he said.
Emergency ambulance communications centre operations manager
Alan Goudge said police did not convey a sense of urgency
regarding the incident or the patient's status.
"A delay of 23 minutes occurred between receiving the initial
call from the police and the call taker entering the job
details into [the ambulance system].
"While a delay of that length is not acceptable, during the
23-minute period SouthComm was making progress by requesting
further information and attempting to arrange a helicopter
crew to attend the scene," he said.
Both the Queenstown and Dunedin rescue helicopters were
dealing with other incidents at the same time in Queenstown
and Wanaka.
He said changes had been made to the recording of job details
and training programmes.
Constable Chris Blackford said the police had "fronted up and
explained the delays".
"The police and ambulance service have learned from this
tragedy," he said.
However, he questioned why the race organisers did not have a
helicopter on standby during the event and why the on-course
doctor was also a competitor.
He questioned why the team of medics did not include a
qualified paramedic and why they had only one bottle of
oxygen.
Motatapu's head medic Michel Lepage said he was not a
qualified paramedic but a pre-hospital first aid attendant
with experience in wilderness first aid.
He said there were three other first aid personnel on the
team, as well as the on-course doctor.
During the race, he came across Mr Schriek who was struggling
to breathe and had acute chest pain.
Mr Schriek told him he had had a coronary stent inserted five
years previously but he did not have angina.
Mr Lepage administered oxygen and radioed race director
Tracey Neil to call 111.
He said Mr Schriek slipped out of consciousness when the
oxygen ran out after about 25 minutes.
He, along with competitors including Dr Trudy Ballantine,
course doctor Andrew Wilson, a dentist, and an ex-police
officer with first aid training, began CPR using a
defibrillator.
After about an hour, Mr Schriek was confirmed dead.
Dr Ballantine told the court she doubted whether a helicopter
and paramedics would have made any difference to Mr Schriek's
survival.
