Ambulance service apologises to Iredales

The NSW Ambulance Service has given a formal apology to the family of a boy who died after getting lost in the bush, admitting they failed to deal adequately with a series of desperate phone calls from the dying teen.

David Iredale became separated from school friends while on a bushwalk in the Blue Mountains and made a series of calls to 000 begging for help after his third day in the open and 24 hours without water.

But when he told emergency operators he was lost, feeling faint and couldn't walk far, they kept asking him where the nearest street was and what suburb he was in — despite him repeatedly stating that he was lost in the wilderness.

During a coronial enquiry in Sydney, service counsel Michael Windsor SC admitted to theshortcomings of staff, who had failed even to ask the distraught boy's name.

"The Service acknowledges that there was a failure on its part to accurately convey the details of the conversations with David Iredale to police," he said.

"The Service unreservedly apologises to the Iredale family because of the failures."

David's parents, Stephen and Maryanne Iredale, had to leave the room when recordings of David's final moments were played.

In them, he explained he hadn't drunk water "for a long period of time" and in the final calls apologised for forgetting the name of the track he was on — only to be told "don't keep saying that, just tell me where you are".

Search parties eventually found David's body eight days after his death and only 200m from the Mt Solitary walking track he had identified during his earlier phone calls.

David and two of his schoolmates had undertaken their hike in the belief it would count towards a Duke of Edinburgh Award.

ninemsn 14 Apr 2009

This is one of the LARGEST technological FARCES, that ultimately cost a child life.

Telecommunications companies use Tower Triangulation to establish the position of ANY mobile call, and have been doing so for quite some time.

This fact is generally NOT know to the general public.

Politicians and Telecommunications companies CANNOT and WILL NOT admit that mobile telephone technology existed. It is 'marketed' under AGPS, and sold with maps which gives the user the allusion that they are in control.

In this case it has cost the life of an innocent child.