It is welcome news that the families and friends of the victims of Hurricane Fabian managed to get some closure at this week's inquest into their deaths last September 5.

Now the friends and families have some insight into their last moments, and will also know that every effort was made to save them once they were trapped on the Causeway, and to that extent, the inquest has served part of its purpose.

The second goal is to ascertain how they died and to rebuild the chain of events that led to their deaths.

Inquests have also been used to assign blame if necessary and to make recommendations to avoid any repetition of a tragedy.

In recent years, Coroners have steered away from assigning blame following a change in the law, and have restricted themselves to determining the actual cause.

That is not always good, because it is important that lessons are learned from an event such as this.

To be sure, some actions have already been taken in the wake of Fabian, most notably the decision to close the Causeway when a serious tropical storm or hurricane threatens.

The primary concern now must be the breakdown of the chain of command at St. George's Police Station.

According to the evidence given at the inquest, all Police officers were instructed not to leave their stations except in a dire emergency.

It is important to note that the Police Service is a disciplined body, in which orders are given by senior officers and must be obeyed. Without discipline, the entire structure collapses.

What the inquest failed to uncover was what possessed P.c. Stephen Symons and P.c. Nicole O'Connor to ignore those instructions and to agree to transport Police civilian worker Gladys Saunders to her home on the other side of the Causeway.

Whether or not the Police officers were directly told that full hurricane conditions had struck is irrelevant in the end. The officers had their orders and should have obeyed both them and the subsequent efforts on the part of the officer in charge of the watch to get them return.

Had they done so, they would be alive today.

As Coroner Edward King said: “It is crystal clear, regardless of how humanitarian his (P.c. Symons') actions were, he acted against the expressed warnings of his superiors. If he had obeyed them he would not have had his car stalled (on the Causeway).”

These are the facts. They do not lessen the sympathy that the whole community feels for the victims, but they it has been a costly lesson.