Vic: Paramedic speaks out against fencing rock pool tragedy area

AAP General News (Australia)
12-27-2004
Vic: Paramedic speaks out against fencing rock pool tragedy area

MELBOURNE, Dec 27 AAP - An ambulance paramedic who worked in vain to help save four
members of a family who drowned on Christmas Day has spoken out against calls to fence
off the Victorian mountain rock pool where the tragedy occurred.

Paramedic Wayne Rice said today visitors to McKenzie Falls in the Grampians National
Park should heed signs warning against slippery rocks and swimming in the rock pool, rather
than diminishing the area's beauty by putting up a fence.

His comments follow the Christmas Day drownings of 12-year-old Marina Mir, her father
Muzaffer, 55, and her uncles Mahzar Dar, 35, and Tahir Bhatti, 35, in an horrific chain
of events that has rocked Melbourne's tight-knit Pakistani community of which they were
members.

Marina's father, uncles and 17-year-old sister all entered the pool in an attempt to
rescue the girl, only to get into difficulties in the icy water.

The sister was revived after being pulled from the pool and was later released from
Stawell Hospital.

Mr Rice was among four paramedics who desperately but unsuccessfully attempted to revive
two in the party.

An ambulance paramedic for 17 years, Mr Rice said this Christmas was probably the worst
he had experienced.

"The looks on people's faces, people who weren't related and didn't know the people,
but they knew the events that happened... " Mr Rice told Melbourne radio station 3AW.

As the grief-stricken families attempted to come to terms with the tragedy, one of
the dead girl's relatives yesterday labelled the falls a death trap.

"There should be a fence there," said Khalid Mir, another of the dead girl's uncles.

"There is a sign, but it is invisible.

"This has been doomsday for us... please put a fence there."

Mr Rice said similar calls were aired to him by a grief-stricken family member at the scene.

"One of the family members came to me afterwards and said - Why do you make it like
this'?" he said. "She said - Why don't you put a fence up?"

Mr Rice spoke of the isolation of the area, the arduous path to the rock pool and the
failure of mobile phones at the foot of the falls.

"If you enter into the water, the slime that is on the rocks, they become very slippery
and it is understandable that someone could slip.

"It is not understandable that four lives have been lost."

Meanwhile, Victoria's Tourism Minister John Pandazopolous told the ABC that multicultural
water safety programs might need to be improved, in light of the incident.

Mr Pandazopolous said water safety was just as important at inland venues.

"At the end of the day you can't put barricades around everything," Mr Pandazopolous
told the ABC.

"It's about awareness amongst people themselves, it's about taking precautions and
only doing what you know you're capable of with your abilities.

AAP jt/cmc

KEYWORD: DROWNED SECOND NIGHTLEAD

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