12-year old girl died when hospital implosion went horribly wrong.
Fifteen years ago today, 12-year-old Katie Bender lost her life during the implosion of the old Royal Canberra Hospital.
About 100,000 Canberrans went to Lake Burley Griffin on July 13, 1997, to watch as the hospital – where many of them had been born – was “imploded”, to make way for the National Museum of Australia. The event had been staged as a celebration, and a radio station held a competition to push the plunger that set off the blast.
But instead, because of a series of systemic failures outlined in a 657-page report from the coroner, shrapnel was thrown more than 400 metres across the lake.
Katie, who had gone there with her family after church that Sunday morning, was struck in the head with a 1kg piece of steel, reportedly travelling at up to 150km a second, and died instantly.
The coroner’s report found that two contractors involved had not been skilled enough to complete the project in the time available, that government regulatory bodies had not exercised their roles in a visible fashion and that senior officials in the chief minister’s department had “played a prominent, intrusive role that was wholly unwarranted” despite having no knowledge of the demolition process.
“It is inevitable that accidents do sometimes occur despite the best precautions, but what occurred when Katie Bender was killed was inexcusable,” Coroner Shane Madden was quoted as saying at the time.
Read more here.
