Thursday 4 March 2010

Killed by the safety regulations


From The Times:
An injured woman lay for six hours at the foot of a disused mine shaft because safety rules banned firefighters from rescuing her, an inquiry heard yesterday. As Alison Hume was brought to the surface by mountain rescuers she died of a heart attack.

A senior fire officer at the scene admitted that crews could only listen to her cries for help, after she fell down the 60ft shaft, because regulations said their lifting equipment could not be used on the public. A memo had been circulated in Strathclyde Fire and Rescue stations months previously stating that it was for use by firefighters only.
New Labour may not have achieved much in thirteen years, but they have managed to badger the British people so badly that they'd let a woman die in slow, lonely agony rather than cross their masters' insane whims.

1 comment:

Neil Russell said...

Mindlessness knows no bounds.

Don't know why but the story (and another one recently that was similar) reminded me of the old Joseph Malins poem; "A Fence or an Ambulance" from 1895 that's just as timely today as it was then, except for the "sensible few" part

Fence or Ambulance

It's worth a read if for nothing else than the line: "It's not the slipping that hurts them so much, as the shock down below when they're stopping"