By Jessica Rowe
A fire fighter first on the scene at the CTV building collapse was told not to carry out any rescues.
He told the coroner's inquest into the deaths of eight who survived the collapse, but later died, that a senior fire officer told him to concentrate on the fire and leave the rescues to everybody else.
Fire station officer Alan Butcher was in charge of the first crew that stumbled on the CTV building collapse by chance while driving through the city.
He tried to call for more appliances over the radio, but struggled to get the message through as communications were overloaded.
“There was nothing formal about my radio message and I gave up waiting for a space, and instead just yelled out on top of everybody else,” Mr Butcher says.
When help did arrive, it was 54 minutes after the quake.
Steve Warden was the second station officer at the scene, and says they were short on crews and didn't have time to establish a command point.
“It never entered the equation with the amount of work we had to do in the initial response,” Mr Warden says.
“We were stretched, there was no spare person to command the site, we busy trying to work quickly on our side,” Mr Butcher says, “and we were hoping a high-ranking official would come.”
Finally a high-ranking official did arrive, and ordered fire fighters to focus on the deep-seated fire - not the people trapped under the rubble that were in desperate need of help.
“Dave Burford visited the CTV site at some point and spoke to me. Dave Burford instructed me to attend to the fire rather than focus on rescues.”
Eight foreigners were trapped alive in the rubble but died of their injuries before being rescued.
Mr Butcher told the inquest the only equipment he had on the fire truck was a sledgehammer and a saw, and that a water supply was hard to come by at the scene.
Also missing was someone in command.
Demolition workers who were there helping at the scene will give evidence tomorrow.
3 News