A volunteer firefighter has died after they were struck and killed by a Tasmania Police vehicle in a late-night crash on Flinders Island.
The incident involving the emergency service personnel occurred as the on-duty officer was driving towards Whitemark along Lady Barron Road at around 9pm on Saturday.
Assistant Commissioner Adrian Bodnar said the firefighter, a man in his early 60s, was crossing onto the road when the collision occurred.
“The officer immediately contacted emergency services and commenced CPR,” he said. “Sadly, the pedestrian … died at the scene.”
Bodnar said the officer has been with the force for around 30 years and was not physically injured but is “traumatised and distressed” by the incident.
“We’ve got a fire service volunteer who’s tragically and sadly lost his life on the island. The police officer, the gentleman who’s deceased, the paramedic who attended the scene, they work together in times of emergency,” Bodnar said.
“So you can only imagine the grief and the hurt that our people and the families involved that they’re actually going through this morning … this is a terrible tragedy and our emergency services community is really hurting.”
He said the officer was not responding to any specific incident at the time of the crash and was travelling within the posted 100km/h speed limit in an area with no street lighting.
“Weather conditions at the time were quite dark and certainly that was validated by the fact that … we couldn’t use the [rescue] helicopter to deploy any additional resources to the island last night,” Bodnar said.
“We made efforts through aircraft available through the Royal Flying Doctor Service and Ambulance Tasmania … to deploy additional staff to the island to undertake the necessary investigations we need to do from a policing perspective and also provide additional resources to the island.”
“Our plan would be to bring the police officer off the island soon to make sure we can provide those appropriate wraparound services and then we’ll see what needs to take place into the future.”
“But we’ve got to think about his welfare as well now and into the future, so it’s appropriate that we take some positive affirmative action to support him in the workplace.”
“My priority is to make sure that we do a full and thorough investigation on behalf of the coroner, but my other priority is also to make sure that we’re supporting the member involved and other members from emergency services sectors that were involved in attending this critical incident last night, as well as the community.”
