Six members of the Emergency Support Group (ESG) arrived at Banksia Hill approximately one hour and 20 minutes after their call out. Given that this event occurred on a weekend it required staff to be called in for duty via personal pager. The time taken to arrive at the facility was therefore not unexpected. However consideration should be given to improvements in the availability or resources of ESG on weekends and evenings in order to improve response times.
The six members of the ESG could have intervened for a simple roof ascent; however, this was no longer the situation. The ESG Superintendent sensibly waited for additional resources and a solid plan before deploying into the centre. This delay allowed a very swift response once resources were deployed and avoided a situation whereby the ESG and the police would have been chasing detainees around the site. In five minutes they had re-apprehended 25 detainees and in another five minutes they re-apprehended a further 10 detainees. At that time it was believed that around 30 detainees were out of their cells.
Nonetheless approximately on and a half hours passed from the time the PRT set up its cordon around the staff amenities building to the time the ESG and the police deployed into the facility. This means detainees had a free run of the facility for an hour and a half. This delay suggests that the Department was not adequately prepared to respond to an incident of this size, on a Sunday night.