After the flood questions remain
At the small east Auckland college, 550 pupils, staff and parents remembered the three boys, three girls and their teacher who were on the final day of an adventure holiday.
Hundreds of kilometres away in Tongariro National Park, 50 distraught staff of the Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Pursuits Centre returned to Mangatepopo Stream to pay their respects by throwing bouquets into the water.
Tales of heroism emerged yesterday. A friend of teacher Tony McClean, 29, said Mr McClean died trying to carry a pupil to safety on his back. Apparently he had a child, they tell us, on his back, as did the instructor have a child on her back as they were trying to get out with the kids.
Sitting in front of a wall covered with letters, cards and flowers, Natasha Brays father, Andy, described how his daughter had tackled the trials of life.
She said her good friend Portia, who was in the group and died also, had said, weve got this little saying, `Well jump in puddles, dad.
The last two bodies were retrieved by helicopter early yesterday - their location 2.5 kilometres downstream evidence of the torrent of water that overwhelmed the group.
Elim principal Murray Burton said he had been told the victims had no chance of escape because of the high walls of the riverbank they were caught in. We understand that there was a flash flood which took the river probably triple, quadruple, in height - and equally in such a short space of time dissipated.
Five members of the group made it to safety, including the instructor, who had been in the job for three months.
The pupils, Mr McClean and the instructor were traversing the stream when they were overcome by rapidly rising water levels in the gorge, police said. They were just 30 metres from the end of their adventure.
Fears of rising water levels caused guides from a nearby rafting trip involving 11 and 12-year-olds to cancel their plans the same day. The pupils from New Plymouths Highlands Intermediate were at Turangis Lake Taupo Christian Camp.
Three investigations have been launched into the deaths - by the centre, the Labour Department and the police.
MetService says two alerts - a heavy-rain warning and a severe thunderstorm watch - were in place when the Elim group entered Mangatepopo Gorge, near Whakapapa Village.
But centre chief executive Grant Davidson said: There was no rain warning, it was just a simple rain forecast that was in the MetService report we get faxed here at eight oclock every morning.
The flow of water in the stream swelled from 0.5 cubic metres a second to 18 cubic metres within half an hour. The pupils and their teacher were swept downstream about 4pm.
Mr Burton has stood behind the centre, which ran the course, but said questions needed to be answered over the decision to take people into the canyon that day.
We have natural questions as to what decision-making process they went through and that would be good to find out, but that is where I will leave it at this stage.
He said the group was well prepared and everyone wore wetsuits, lifejackets, hard helmets and polypropylene clothing during the river outing.
But when a flash flood took the stream to perhaps four times its normal level, the pupils were trapped by the high walls and had no escape.
One of the survivors told his mother he survived because he found a log to hang on to. He had already had his helmet split from off his head so there were huge rocks around.
Hamiltons Fraser High School principal Martin Elliott, whose pupils also attend the pursuits centre, asked why the canyoning trip went ahead at all. My concern is, we all knew the weather was going to be bad right across the country. It might not be an appropriate time to say this, but why did that trip take place? Why were they in a swollen river?
Outdoor pursuits centre chief executive Grant Davidson said weather reports were faxed every morning, but it did not get the heavy-rainfall warning that day.
We subscribe to a MetService report that comes in every morning in time for our 8 oclock staff meeting.
The report in the morning in question had the words rain with intermittent visibility.
Staff visually checked the stream above and below the gorge before they went in.
We had experienced staff review what was happening in the mountains and there was no sign of anything that would lead us to not carry out the trip at that time.
When they entered the gorge the water was at a very low level and there was no prediction for heavy rain.
Obviously, if we had known or predicted about the pulse of water, we would not have been there.
Unfortunately in the outdoors theres often completely unpredictable events that can happen despite the best training and judgment in the world.
Operators say it is the first canyoning disaster in New Zealand. The Palmerston North coroner has begun an investigation, which police will conduct.
The outdoor pursuit centre will commission an external review, and the Labour Department will also investigate.
- with NZPA
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Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 7:53 pm under