#WestdeneDamDisaster: From the memory of the official police photographer
JOBURG – We speak to the official police photographer of the Westdene Dam disaster.
Nico Paizes was the official police photographer on 27 March 1985 and when he arrived, many of the children had already been taken to either the hospital or the mortuary.
Even though many of the thousands of people still surrounded the dam it was eerily quiet, he said.
Paizes, like many others, still wonder how the accident could have happened. He said that among police officers many speculations formed.
“Something must have happened,” he said.
Afterwards, Paizes said, weights, representing the children, were put on a test bus and a stunt driver tried to recreate the incident to try and determine what could have happened, but the bus never landed in the water, he said.
Despite the nature of his work, Paizes said he could not help but think it could have been his own children or someone in his family.
“I had to switch myself off so that I could do my job.”
And his job was to identify all points of interest surrounding the investigation at the scene.
He took aerial pictures of where the bus went over and where it sank; he took pictures of the bus after it was lifted out of the water.
The bus driver survived and was treated at the then JG Strijdom Hospital. He could not remember what happened.
