A firefighter swore at paramedics who failed to bring life-saving equipment to the seaside spot where a woman had just been pulled from underwater after becoming wedged between rocks, an inquest heard today.
Paramedic Colleen Gibson, who was the first emergency responder to arrive on the scene, is also said to have failed to tell police and fire crews who arrived shortly after her that Saffron Cole-Nottage was within a crucial 30-minute time period when her life might still be saved.
The two-week inquest into the death of Ms Cole-Nottage has already heard how a 999 operator didn’t establish the mother-of-six was at risk of drowning due to the incoming tide until seven minutes into a call with the teenager who raised the alarm.
Another paramedic who arrived after Ms Gibson last week accused other responders on the scene of effectively ‘winging it’ during the ‘disjointed’ incident.
Ms Cole-Nottage, 32, had been walking her dog with her daughter when she fell head-first into the sea defence rocks in Lowestoft, Suffolk on February 2 last year.
Giving evidence today, Ms Gibson said she had been involved with four previous water incidents before Ms Cole-Nottage’s but she hadn’t been trained to take command of a multi-agency emergency.
She arrived by the sea at 8.10pm and told the inquest: ‘I felt unable to make a rescue and now, being 20 minutes submerged…’
Police bodycam footage showed officers who arrived shortly afterwards asking Ms Gibson if anything could be done to save Ms Cole-Nottage and she replied: ‘No.’
Saffron Cole-Nottage, 32, was walking a dog with one of her daughters when she fell in Lowestoft, Suffolk
Questioned by inquest counsel Bridget Dolan KC about why she didn’t tell emergency services colleagues that the opportunity to save the patient’s life potentially extended for another 10 minutes, she said: ‘I don’t know.’
When Ms Dolan told her police ‘said that if they’d been told a rescue was possible they would have tried’, she added: ‘I don’t believe that to be safe. I wouldn’t be able to reach down into the rocks head-first with the water.’
Ms Dolan replied: ‘Nobody is saying you should have tried. The police have said if they knew there was a possibility of rescuing Saffron they would have tried.’
Expert witness Matthew England, a nurse and paramedic who sits on a group that advises the Home Office about emergency services working together on incidents, said Ms Gibson should have taken command of the scene as the first responder there.
She should also have communicated with Coastguard, police and firefighters there but it ‘did not appear very coordinated in terms of what was going on’, he added.
‘When the fire service extracted [Ms Cole-Nottage], they did not seem to be aware that it was being called a [body] recovery. They started CPR,’ he told the hearing.
‘There did not seem to be any briefing or any sort of awareness.
‘I could not see any evidence of a huddle or briefing going on between the agencies.’
The mother-of-six became wedged head-first between sea defence rocks
A teenage girl called 999 for help but the operator failed to establish for seven minutes that the tide was coming in fast
Firefighters who went down to Ms Cole-Nottage managed to pull her free within a minute, the inquest has heard, and wanted paramedics to bring life-saving equipment close to the spot.
Ms Dolan said: ‘The initial rescue is basic life support, mouth-to-mouth.
‘We had seen the expletive use by a fire officer at the scene, asking the ambulance to get down and bring equipment.’
However, Mr England said around the sea defence rocks ‘was not a safe place to carry out anything but basic life support’ and it would have been better at ‘a safe spot where you have 360 degrees access to the patient’.
He added Ms Gibson, who cried on the witness stand, should have had ‘more support… from the control room’ as the ‘lone paramedic’ at first.
Referring to the 999 call made by the teenage girl, who was with two friends, the coroner said: ‘The words “trapped”, “jammed”, “stuck” [were said] within four minutes of the call.
‘You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to realise a single crew RRV [rapid response vehicle] would not be able to do much about that.’
The first day of the inquest last week heard how Ms Cole-Nottage’s legs were left sticking in the air after falling head-first between the rocks.
Floral tributes left at the scene following Ms Cole-Nottage’s death
The 999 call was placed at 7.52pm but it was not until 7.59pm that the call handler established how quickly the tide was coming in.
Christopher Strutt, a call handler team leader, told the inquest the fire service should have been contacted by the ambulance service within seconds when it was known that someone’s head was trapped.
But he said controllers had to go through an algorithm, asking questions prompted by their computer, and were discouraged from raising their own queries until the list was completed.
The revelation prompted coroner Darren Stewart to suggest the ‘rather clunky’ system had contributed to a ‘muddled response’.
Chris Finbow, a senior coastal engineer for East Suffolk Council, told the inquest today that the tragedy involving Ms Cole-Nottage happened a couple of days after a full moon.
There is something [like] 700 tides a year. Three per cent of those are a tidal range that we saw on that night,’ he said.
‘It meant the tide came in incredibly quickly. It was 80cm higher than a standard tide.
‘We always get big tides after the full moons. That was the peak of it.’
The inquest has heard that Ms Cole-Nottage had been drinking on the day of the incident and was more than three times the drink-drive limit when she fell.
In a statement after her death, her partner, Mick Wheeler, said she had lived a life ‘full of love and laughter’ with their children and her loss had ‘left an indescribable void’.
The inquest continues.
