Our People in NT
Lieutenant Commander Dave Lassam
Lieutenant Commander (LCDR) Dave Lassam of HMAS Cerberus always seems to be in the right place at the right time to help people. He has performed CPR or called for help more than 25 times. But by far the biggest disaster he has had to deal with was the 2002 Bali bombings.
He was posted to Headquarters Northern Command in Darwin as a health operations officer when he heard the shocking news there had been two bombs detonated in the tourist area on the night of Saturday October 12.
“I was at a barbecue at a friend’s house and we were hearing more and more about the horrific incidents,” LCDR Lassam said.
He wanted to help, so he headed back to base.
“All hell had broken loose. I was sent to bases and hospitals to collect as many stretchers as I could find and collect some blood from Darwin Hospital before taking them to Darwin airport,” LCDR Lassam said.
“When the aircraft arrived carrying the injured and stopped on the tarmac the air conditioning would turn off.
“We had to quickly get the injured patients out and onto the runways. We’d put them in the shade of the wings, but the Darwin heat was intense.”
LCDR Lassam’s job was to check every patient off on a list and then help ferry them to the great line of ambulances, passing on their medical information to paramedics.
“I was also one of the first to see those people who had died. There was a lot of nasty stuff,” he said.
“I stayed at that command post for five days and only got about five hours’ sleep in that time, just running on adrenalin.
“After all the aircraft had come in I was told to go shower and have a kip but of course I couldn’t sleep. Then it was back out to move patients on to Brisbane and Adelaide and other capitals to get them into those hospitals.”
Soon after Operation Bali Assist, LCDR Lassam was posted to Victoria and realised he was feeling strange.
“I started to think I might be getting post traumatic stress disorder. I thought ‘I can handle this, I need to handle this’. So I looked over my paperwork from Operation Bali Assist and decided to try to contact some of those injured that were from Victoria,” he said.
“I looked up their names in the phone book.”
LCDR Lassam has kept in touch and found the relationships helpful in his recovery.
Attending a football match in north Melbourne where one of the Bali bombing victims was playing in aid of survivors, he met many people he had helped during those frantic days in Darwin.
“There were all these survivors at the match and they remembered me, it was amazing,” he said.
“I was the only Navy medical member on the tarmac during that time so I stood out in white they said.”