A Kāpiti Airport evacuation, a mum's delayed flights, and a baby who died not knowing her mother's arms
Friday, 19 March 2021
Three investigations are now under way into how air transport delays kept a mother from the side of her dying newborn baby. Stuff reporter Brittany Keogh speaks to Annie Riley about the worst night of her life.
Lying for hours on a gurney in a plane on the tarmac at Palmerston North airport, Annie Riley's thoughts were consumed by her newborn baby, who was 150km away.
Having had a caesarean hours earlier, Annie was in a lot of pain. But even more gut-wrenching was the pull to get to baby Charlie, as Annie anxiously waited for a helicopter to take her to her baby.
Charlie had been rushed to the neo-natal intensive care unit at Wellington Regional Hospital not long after being born around 11am at Nelson Hospital on December 13, 2020. Doctors told Annie she also needed to be transferred there as soon as possible.
Charlie was dying.
**READ MORE:
* Police close investigation into 'threat' that closed Kāpiti Airport
* Kāpiti Airport closed following threat on social media
* Baby dies before mum arrives at Wellington Hospital after medical flight to Kāpiti airport diverted
**
When Annie recalls what happened on that awful day, a day that should have been one of the best of her life, she has to pause at times, looking away as she wipes away tears.
Due to two airport closures – one of which was sparked by a security threat posted on social media – Annie didn’t get to Wellington in time.
Charlie died before her mum could hold her.
The delay in getting Annie to Wellington is the subject of three investigations.
Losing Charlie – Annie and husband Blair Riley's third daughter – is difficult for Annie to talk about.
But she’s chosen to share her story in the hope that it could prevent other families from going through the same trauma.
While she knows doctors did everything they could to save Charlie, Annie wants answers about what went wrong during her medical transfer. She hopes the organisations involved will improve their procedures so something similar never happens again.
“There didn't seem to be any cohesiveness at all,” Annie says. “Granted it was a night where everything that could go wrong actually did, but it doesn't mean that it should be that hard.”
Charlie was born at nearly 34 weeks after her mum’s waters broke early.
“At first she seemed to be okay, but then her blood oxygen levels didn't pick up.”
The atmosphere in the operating theatre was frantic. As well as tending to Charlie, doctors and nurses were treating Annie because her womb wasn't retracting, and she was losing a lot of blood.
With Annie still on the operating table, doctors whisked Charlie to the intensive care unit.
Before Charlie was transferred to Wellington, doctors and nurses helped Annie into a wheelchair and pushed her to Charlie, so she could see her and be next to her.
But Annie couldn’t hold her. “There was not anything I could do because I’d just been ripped open,” she says between sobs.
It was not yet clear what was wrong with Charlie. A post-mortem would later show her lungs had not developed properly after about 16 to 18 weeks into Annie's pregnancy, meaning the air sacs in the lungs that transfer oxygen into the blood never formed. The condition is fatal and can't be detected in pregnancy scans.
Blair travelled with Charlie across Cook Strait on a Life Flight aircraft. Given her condition, Annie was unable to go with them.
While their emergency was under way, another was unfolding at Kāpiti Airport, in Paraparaumu.
About 11.45am, staff were evacuated after the airport received a threat. In the rush to leave, workers in the tower forgot to turn on the automatic runway lights.
The oversight would have tragic consequences for Annie.
Back in the Nelson maternity ward, staff scrambled to organise an air ambulance from Whanganui to take her to Wellington to be with Charlie.
By the time the Air Wanganui plane arrived in Nelson, which Annie estimates was after 9pm, the runway at Wellington Airport was closed for scheduled maintenance, so instead they flew to Kāpiti Airport, about 40 minutes by road north of Wellington.
As a medical flight, it should have been able to land there. But when the pilot circled above Kāpiti Airport trying to trigger the automatic runway lights, they failed to switch on.
The flight was diverted to Palmerston North, where it landed safely.
A Life Flight helicopter was then requested to transfer Annie to Wellington Regional Hospital. She says it took hours to arrive.
Annie can't remember much of the flight, as she was going in and out of consciousness. A midwife had accompanied Annie from Nelson, and must have been in phone contact with doctors in Wellington.
After they landed, just after 4am on December 14, the midwife said: “I’m so sorry Annie.”
Charlie had died at 1.45am.
“I never got to hold her,” Annie says.
The search for answers – and hope for change
In the wake of Charlie's death, New Zealand’s air navigation service provider Airways, which employs the staff who work in Kāpiti Airport’s tower, reported the failure to turn the runway lights to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
Airways is reviewing its processes for leaving a tower under urgency. The review is due to be completed soon.
The company that owns Kāpiti Airport, NZPropCo, has made a report to the CAA and has looked into whether the incident could have been prevented. Spokeswoman Dani Simpson says the airport’s conclusion is yes – if the person or people who made the threat hadn’t done so.
NZPropCo reported the threat that led to the closure to the police. Police investigated but did not take action against the person responsible.
Capital & Coast District Health Board is also conducting a review, the findings of which are being finalised and are expected to be completed by the end of March.
Life Flight and Air Wanganui referred requests for comment to Capital & Coast District Health Board.
Data from the DHB shows Air Wanganui’s air ambulance plane used Kāpiti Airport for 21 missions in the six months to January 28, 2021.
The airport has been the centre of some controversy for months, with many in the local community speculating NZPropCo intends to close it. NZPropCo says no such decision has been made.
Annie says her experience highlights the importance of keeping Kāpiti Airport open.
She doesn't necessarily want to see the person or people who made the threat prosecuted. But she hopes they’ll hear her story, so they know what a devastating effect their actions had.
Grief comes in waves
Meanwhile, she and her family live with the fallout every day. Annie says no one organisation or person is to blame. But her grief is compounded by knowing that if she had been transferred to Wellington more promptly, she likely would have been able to spend precious time with Charlie.
“More than anything, I want them to find out exactly what went wrong, why it went wrong, and figure out how to fix this.”
Her physical recovery has also been “terrible”.
Because she was on her feet within about an hour of the caesarean, the stitches started coming out and the wound reopened.
Choking back tears, Annie recalls how awful it was when her breast milk started coming in – and being confronted with all the baby items when she returned from the hospital.
“You come home, and you have to put it all away. I couldn't unpack the hospital bag for a month … Then you have to give away all the nappies and stuff.”
In the days following Charlie’s death, specialist hospital staff who support bereaved parents took casts of Charlie's hands and feet and organised for photos of her to be taken with her mum and dad.
But there was more bad news to come. While Annie and Blair were still in Wellington, Annie’s mum, Rose Brady, rang and told the couple their eldest daughter Rosie, then 5, had been admitted to hospital in Nelson with pneumonia and bacterial and viral infections. Doctors were saying she might not survive.
Like Charlie, Rosie had had a traumatic birth. Her umbilical cord dropped through Annie’s cervix ahead of Rosie, cutting off her oxygen supply, which resulted in Rosie having cerebral palsy.
She spent the first nine months of her life in a neo-natal intensive care unit in Western Australia, where her parents were living at the time, and she lives with disabilities.
Thankfully, Rosie, who turned 6 on Tuesday, recovered from her pneumonia later the same month.
The family had Charlie embalmed and brought her home so her sisters, Rosie and 4-year-old Izzy, could make sense of her death.
Instead of a funeral, they held a celebration. About 50 relatives and friend dressed in bright colours – particularly yellows and pinks – and brought potluck meals to the family home.
Charlie lay, wrapped in muslin, in a wicker bassinet in the lounge near the Christmas tree. Annie had woven flowers into the basket – a family heirloom that many of Charlie's cousins had slept in at different times.
The next-door neighbours have a menagerie of animals, and they brought their parrots and lizards round to show the kids. Annie and Blair hired a bouncy castle, which was set up in the yard.
With the support of family and friends, Annie, Blair, Izzy and Rosie are slowly healing. Annie’s work as a florist is a creative outlet that helps her channel her emotions.
“Grief is such a weird thing, it's kind of tidal. Some days you’ll be fine and some days it will smash back in your face.”