An inquest into the tragedy that killed 4 people at the Dreamworld theme park on the Gold Coast in 2016, began on Monday, June 18.
On Oct. 25, 2016, a six-person raft in the theme park’s Thunder River Rapids ride collided with an empty raft and flipped backwards. Cindy Low, Kate Goodchild, Luke Dorsett, and Roozi Araghi died instantly.
Queen’s Counsel Ken Fleming who is assisting the inquiry told the court that the four tragic deaths were “sadly … both violent and unnatural,” reported News.com.au. He said the tragedy had been “felt Australia-wide,” and the main goal of the inquest would be to prevent similar tragedies from happening again.
The first day of the investigation found that a Dreamworld ride operator was unsure which emergency button to press when the raft collision occurred. According to Detective Sergeant Nicola Brown, who is the principal police investigator on the case, the operator and other staff at Dreamworld received a memo just days before the tragedy about the ride’s emergency immediate shutdown button—“don’t worry about that button, no one uses it.” The memo told them not to press the emergency stop button unless there were certain specific circumstances.
