{"id":575776,"date":"2026-08-21T10:44:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T10:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/575776\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T10:44:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T10:44:18","slug":"code-word-at-centre-of-sydney-teen-hiker-survival-bungle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/575776\/","title":{"rendered":"Code word at centre of Sydney teen hiker ‘survival’ bungle"},"content":{"rendered":"

A radio code word will be central to investigations into harrowing miscommunication<\/a> about a missing teenage hiker’s survival.<\/p>\n

Family of 18-year-old Lily Hooper were briefly told their daughter was still alive<\/a> after a volunteer discovered her body on Thursday in Nattai National Park, southwest of Sydney.<\/p>\n

Early reports suggested a code word, pertaining to water bottles, may have been responsible for the botched communication. <\/p>\n

On Friday, NSW SES Commissioner Mike Wassing confirmed the service often consigned codes and would take part in a multi-agency communications investigation. <\/p>\n

NSW Police, the lead agency, had assigned Hooper a code, he said.<\/p>\n

“It’s quite common during search-and-rescue operations, police will set a code for the search-and-rescue operators to use with respect to if they find the missing person,” Wassing said.<\/p>\n

He added codes are usually associated with some aspect “like that in terms of bottles of water”. <\/p>\n

Crews on the ground were typically briefed with codes that helped separate logistical information from loved ones who might be monitoring radio lines.<\/p>\n

The service was working with police with respect to any misinformation associated with the code, Wassing said.<\/p>\n

“We’re not looking at blame,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We are looking at identifying how this occurred, and to make sure we work as agencies collectively, to make sure that this can’t occur again.”<\/p>\n

\"Searchers<\/p>\n

Searchers looking for Lily Hooper gathered for a briefing. (Source: NSW SES Woolondilly Unit)<\/p>\n

Nearly 1000 searchers scoured the dense national park in the state’s Southern Highlands for signs of Hooper over eight days.<\/p>\n

Assistant Commissioner Joseph Cassar said Hooper’s body was found a significant distance from her car in thick, dense bushland made up of steep cliffs, making recovery difficult.<\/p>\n

Hooper’s body was recovered on Thursday night, a NSW Police spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon again apologised for the miscommunication on Friday, while Premier Chris Minns also expressed remorse for his part in broadcasting it to parliament.<\/p>\n

Minns had expressed relief at mistaken reports of Hooper’s survival during a parliamentary hearing, before having to rescind his statement. <\/p>\n

The premier said he was yet to personally reach out to the Hooper family.<\/p>\n

“Their focus at the moment is on their grief, and they’ve asked for privacy … I’ll be in contact in the next day or so to make a personal apology,” Minns said.<\/p>\n

Lanyon on Thursday explained the message would have gone through police commands.<\/p>\n

“The normal process, it goes through a range of police commands to the minister for police, and then to the premier’s office,” he said.<\/p>\n

He apologised for the “embarrassment and confusion caused by the miscommunication” and said he regretted any additional trauma caused to the family, who had expressed their relief to media while believing Hooper to be alive. <\/p>\n

Hooper disappeared on Wednesday, August 12, after leaving her home to go on a hike.<\/p>\n

The teenager, from Oakdale in Sydney’s southwest, did not return that evening and could not be contacted on her mobile phone, triggering a wide-scale search.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A radio code word will be central to investigations into harrowing miscommunication about a missing teenage hiker’s survival.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-575776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}