Cave Creek: The Full Story of a National Tragedy

New Zealand has learned absolutely nothing from this tragedy. Restructuring still continues to "save money" and more lives will be lost in the future because of our politically correct penny-pinching politicians.

If anyone needs further details about Cave Creek I am willing to share my evidence. I was a party to the inquiry [A party is like being a lawyer for the inquiry] where my daughter Catherine died.
There is a very good video about this event made by Greenstone.
If you cannot get that video I could lend you a copy of mine.
Andrew McCarthy John Paul II HS Greymouth

just wanted to say thank you so much for these videos, they really have helped me with an inquiry assignment that i have to do on a NZ disaster. you have no idea how much this has helped me so far! and may i ask, if you have any other websites with very useful information about the Cave Creek disaster, could you please tell me?

I have to agree with Dave's comment - It took DoC until the 10th Anniversary for them to FINALLY admit that is was their fault - I was at the Polytech attending a memorial when someone had the balls to at last stand up and say so. About bloody time too! Absolutely disgusting mess that DoC has caused and I will never trust another DoC structure again. Agree with Dave - show the new rangers footage like this, or even some of the photos of the victims and the mess at the bottom and educate them, don't let this disaster happen ever again. Too many beautiful lives were lost that day, and others were ruined because of a lack of structure and proper building skills.

Following my previous comment (as MikeM), it's a shame that only excerpts of this documentary are available as it describes something that was a pretty big turning point in government accountability and the seriousness with which government CEOs took legal compliance (beyond just DoC). Maybe it's cut down for copyright reasons, but if not is there any way to request a more complete version be hosted here?

I've got to agree with the Commission of Inquiry findings on this that the ground staff can't be lumped with responsibility here. It was a screwup with how DoC came to be designed and disorganised within itself from the beginning. Under-resourcing from the government was clearly a problem, but the ground staff were given little or no support to work with from the head office, they were very understaffed and being overworked, and being told (one way or another) to get stuff done anyway despite not having the necessary skill-sets. For all its structures, DoC only had one single registered engineer employed in the entire country at the time of the accident, and he only heard about the collapse after it happened! The ground staff obviously did things they shouldn't have, but people do such things without realising when in stressful and unrealistic situations.

Meanwhile DoC's head office was designed to be very small with the entire organisation de-centralised and not communicating with itself, probably because trying to coordinate all the bits and pieces left over from the early departments would've been expensive and demanding up-front. There wasn't even a clear definitive record of what DoC was responsible for or where the money and resources were going, which means that even if the government had wanted to drop more resources on DoC (which it didn't), DoC would've had a very tough time making a case for it. The only thing that disappoints me from the outcome is that DoC's upper management and the Minister of Conservation weren't held more to account for having let DoC develop into such a state.

I talked to a doc member from the west coast last night about cave creek. She said it happen so long ago we would let it go. Well that upset me more today than it did all them years ago, I was on the coast living in the bush at the time of the tragedy, and what took place by doc out in other parts of the bush was almost as deadly as cave creek. Swingbridges pulled apart and left that way for years, walk ways pulled up over water races, and still like that today. I will never forgive doc staff for this. I know if this happened to a member of my family I would have killed these responsible,
A COMMENT FOR DOC. TELL YOUR NEW STAFF THE STORY OF CAVE CREEK, AND ADMIT FULL RESPONSIBILITY.