Cave Creek Tragedy
Yesterday, I was painfully reminded that it’s 25 years since the tragedy at Cave Creek claimed the lives of 14 people. I had an unexpected call from a Christchurch (New Zealand) based journalist who wanted to talk to the team who constructed the viewing platform overlooking the beautiful, but forever scarred scene of the Cave Creek disaster. He was seeking something from the team, on behalf of those left behind, an apology as none had ever been given.
Forgive me for I do feel I personally owe an apology and wish that their loved ones and my friend Steve O’Dea, had not died because of something I could have done. Steve was, as I recall, the Department of Conservation’s (DoC) Punakaiki Field Centre Ranger-in-Charge. Now, as a Senior Citizen, I look back with possibly clouded but still raw memories on what happened after I had thankfully already left the wild ‘West Coast’.
The worst moment of my life was when I was working for Auckland City Council as an Environmental Enforcement Officer (even worse than hearing that my parents had died after long but expected illness took them), as I heard on the radio in my car the news that the platform had collapsed. I pulled over and parked outside a café. I sat down inside in a daze, almost as if my world had stopped while everyone else continued on as though nothing had happened, which for them it hadn’t! I subsequently documented my recollection of my involvement, convincing myself that someone else was to blame rather than taking on the enormity of the disaster on my shoulders alone. For 10 years I did blame myself, asking what I could have done differently and even perversely seeing it as my over-sized cross to bear, despite the findings of the enquiry. I don’t blame myself now but I did learn from it.
Between 1993 and 1995, I was a Conservation Officer living and working in the pretty village of Hokitika at DoC’s West Coast Conservancy office. At the time, I conducted ‘environmental impact assessments’ of mining applications and drafted Access Arrangements. My main task was to edit specialists’ assessments of key environmental factors and then determine potential mining impacts, provided by miners, to draft Access Arrangements for DoC HQ in Wellington, for/non-approval. In assessing particular mining operations, I was not what is now called a suitably qualified and experienced/competent person e.g. registered engineer, able to determine engineering parameters only the assessment of their potential impacts on the environment, which is my area of expertise.
As detailed fully by the Commission of Enquiry, I was in a team of four who volunteered to work on building the platform, it was also a team building exercise as I met colleagues from the length and breadth of the extensive West Coast Conservancy. I chose the construction because I thought that it was a project where we would see a good outcome, but I never did get to see the completed platform, only the aftermath. My last job was to dig, with help from my new found friends, the deep and long trench for what I assumed would be the concrete counterweight, but I wasn’t involved in its construction. My first job, again with my friend, was to put in the foundation posts that were spaced according to the underlying limestone rock, as in places the ground underneath fell away into the gorge. When I went back to the site just before the enquiry, I was surprised to see that the posts were still there. I also remember helping nail some of the handrail but don’t recall much else.
In hindsight, other than what was determined by the enquiry to be missing, was that I wished I had questioned what we were doing rather than assuming it was all OK! The benefit has been for me to question every project to determine the detail before making a decision, and then writing conditions that have been considered by some as being overly onerous, including the jibe that I should be a regulator, a green cop. I also believe that this has been the beginning of my anxiety attacks when making decisions that could put others at risk and avoiding taking responsibility for other people’s actions. I also admit that I am on the spectrum of an autism disorder and tend to imagine the worst-case scenario, including potentially over-reacting to the current Pandemic, but again I hope I’m wrong!