Jamey Bowring was killed in an explosion at work. The tragedy led to the first ‘proceeds of crime’ case brought by police against a business owner over health and safety. Bowring’s mum, Sarah Ferguson, speaks to journalist David Fisher about the loss of her son.
Sarah Ferguson is Jamey Bowring’s mum. He’s nine years dead this September but she has never stopped being his mum.
“Jamey Lee, my little ‘bell ringer’, my ‘dinga donga’. I would always call him ‘my little Fred’ and he friggin’ hated it. But he was my ‘little Fred’. He was full of life.”
Bowring was killed aged 24 in a workplace accident that continues to play out in the courts.
The latest instalment is a coroner’s inquiry which highlighted deficiencies among regulatory bodies, such as WorkSafe, when it came to the discharge of volatile gases from waste fuel recycling business, Salters Cartage Ltd, in Wiri, South Auckland.
It was there that Bowring was working on September 15, 2015, atop a 96,000 litre fuel silo when the heat and sparks from either a grinder or welder ignited the vapours beneath and shot him into the sky and to his death.
In the years since, Ferguson has worked to find a justice that balances out all that was lost.
She hoped the coroner’s report might bring that balance through recommendations made but is doubtful they go far enough.
The same hope was there with the $11 million “proceeds of crime” case police took against Ron Salter, the owner of Salters Cartage Ltd, when it classed his health and safety failings as “serious crime”.
That hope was also there when Salter pleaded guilty in 2017.
As each judicial step settled on the scales of justice, Ferguson felt the weight shift - then settle back to the awful loss of Bowring.
Speaking in an exclusive interview, she was unsure when or where it ends.
Perhaps, she says, when nothing of the sort can ever happen again. “Jamey mattered,” she says. “Yeah. He mattered.”
The family was Canterbury-based. They moved to Auckland after Ferguson met partner Trevor Ackers, always with a plan to return to Christchurch. When they did, it was in time for the two earthquakes, so - like many others - they moved back north in 2011.
Bowring joined them in Huntly, Waikato, a few years later, buying a house with his partner at the time in a new subdivision.
He wasn’t much of a one for school - ADHD was a factor - but he knew how to work metal. He was working by 14 and could build a horse float by himself a year later.
In Huntly, he worked at an engineering company but in the days before his death had been talking about leaving to work alongside Ackers, who did engineering with a specialisation in building race cars through his Raceworks company.
The day Bowring died, he had taken a sick day to work with Ackers at Salters Cartage with a plan to make the shift permanent.
Learning her son had died
Ferguson: “I know the date he was killed - the 15th - but I’ve no idea what day of the week it was.”
It was a Tuesday. The job came through Salter approaching Ackers. The men knew each other through speedway.
“Trev didn’t want it,” Ferguson recalls, but a contract building cages for the SPCA had fallen away and the work was necessary.
Ackers and Bowring left early, due at Salters Cartage at 10am. Bowring died at 1.36pm.
Ferguson learned of the explosion when she was at work, speaking to a client; her mobile phone ringing and ringing again until a colleague answered and told her she had to take the call. Ferguson’s work call was transferred to another staff member as she put her mobile phone to her ear.
“It was Trev and I couldn’t really understand him. He couldn’t find Jamey. There had been an explosion and he couldn’t find Jamey.
“The noises I made still haunt the ladies I worked with. The whole office had to have counselling.”
Ferguson’s memory of what followed is patchy. “I think trauma makes you forget.” She left Hamilton with a couple of work colleagues, one of them driving her car, and stopped in Huntly to collect Bowring’s partner.
“It was a long drive. I was still hoping they would find him.”
By the time the car had crossed the Bombay Hills, Ferguson was directed to the Manukau police station. Once there, she was put in a room from which she could see helicopters circling Salters Cartage’s Wiri site in the distance.
At one stage, Ferguson left the police station with the intent of walking kilometres to Wiri. She was followed and brought back inside.
By now she knew her son was dead.
“At that point, I knew. I was told because of the explosion I wouldn’t get to get his body back because of how big the explosion was.”
When she was told her son’s body had been recovered, she hung on to the prospect of being allowed into a family room next to where he lay. That night, she called the hospital repeatedly to ask if she could.
“I just needed to be as close as possible as I could be to him. I think I just screamed all night. When you’re in that trauma, you’re drowning.”
Bowring had two funerals. He was farewelled in the north then driven to Picton where mates met him and “drove him home to Christchurch”.
Police and WorkSafe investigated. A police transcript of an interview with Salter two months after the explosion saw the prospect of a manslaughter charge raised. Ultimately, police stepped back and WorkSafe ran the prosecution.
The process of justice never quite settled with Ferguson. She said she was told the WorkSafe charges would be at the same level as police. “It turned out it wasn’t. It’s disappointing.”
The shift to WorkSafe prosecuting had consequences. With a police prosecution under the Crimes Act, Bowring’s family would have qualified for Victim Support and counselling. With a WorkSafe prosecution, nothing. This has since changed - but only for serious injury and fatal incidents from July 2020 onward in which a prosecution took place from July 2021 onwards.
Salter’s prosecution became a mediated affair with an agreed summary of facts. This is when an accused agrees to plead guilty to charges attached to a narrative agreed between the defence and prosecution. This, too, was disappointing for Ferguson.
“I wasn’t surprised at all by the guilty plea but it never felt real. It was just there was so much evidence. If it had been a trial, all of that would have been aired publicly.”
The Herald has accessed much of the evidence in the High Court file created by police when it decided to take a “proceeds of crime” case against the company and Salter, the man Ferguson holds responsible for the loss of her son’s life.
How Jamey Bowring died
The “core activity” of Salters Cartage was turning waste oil into recycled oil and it was this that involved Tank 20, a towering silo which was meant to be certified for hazardous substances yet was non-compliant up until the day of the explosion and beyond.
In 2015, Salter sought Ackers to build gantries and stairways linking the tops of the silos used to store fuel at Salters Cartage.
Ackers had come to know Salter through speedway and built gantries on the site in 2005 with Ferguson. Ackers and Ferguson got work properly under way in mid-August with the the final touches planned for September 10.
Bad weather pushed work off to September 15 when Ackers arrived at Salters Cartage with Bowring.
Their job was to work on the staircase that had been lifted to Tank 20. The silo should have been labelled - as required by law - to say what it contained, the degree and type of hazard it posed and what steps needed to be taken to stop explosion or ignition.
As it emerged, not only was it not correctly labelled but it was incorrectly labelled as containing only diesel - police described it as “materially misleading”.
Instead, the 96,000 litre silo contained a cocktail of “much more volatile substances” including diesel, petrol, kerosene and oil.
While diesel ignites from 52C through to 96C, the sample of fuel taken from the silo by police was found to have a flash point of 17.5C. It meant it should have been classified as a “high hazard” while diesel, with its higher flash point, was a “low hazard”.
CCTV footage gathered in evidence records the hours until Bowring’s death about 1.36pm. At stages in the hours leading up to that moment, sparks and flashes can be seen from the top of the silo where Bowring is grinding and welding.
The law required not only an accurate and clear label on the silo but further signage across Salters Cartage’s yard flagging up “highly flammable liquid and vapour”.
“The signage on the site did not include any such statement,” said police evidence.
It meant “hot work”, such as welding, “would be prohibited in such a zone” unless work had been done to remove the explosive vapour, like cleaning the tank.
The labelling should have been backed up with safety documentation made available to anyone working on the tank, explaining the nature of the danger they faced. This, too, was absent.
The silo itself should not have contained the volatile mix that exploded. To do so, it needed a “safety container test certificate” showing it had been designed, constructed, installed, operated, maintained, inspected, tested and repaired to be lawful for holding hazardous substances. On the day of the explosion, Salters Cartage had no compliance certificates for any of the tanks on the property.
Salter had been told in 2011 Tank 20 needed such a certificate. Compliance issues were again raised in 2015 by a potential purchaser of the business. A month before the fatal incident, Auckland Council - unbeknown to WorkSafe - issued an abatement notice relating to the discharge of fumes.
As it was at the time of Bowring’s death, the silo would have failed a compliance test. It did not have compliant venting - there was a permanently open nozzle on the tank lid where vapour could escape and ignite.
It meant, police said, the volatile brew inside Tank 20 could have exploded at any time through a lightning strike or static electricity.
Problems existed across the yard. The last known annual “location test certificates” held by Salters Cartage expired almost two years before the explosion.
WorkSafe evidence found it “likely” Salter knew the company was non-compliant - and that there was risk of explosion.
The force of the explosion threw Bowring’s body 130 metres to a car sales yard. The wreckage damaged 23 cars; the roof of the neighbouring business needed replacing. The lid of Tank 20 - a 450kg steel cover - was thrown 100m. Bowring’s welder was found switched “on”.
Health and safety failures
In the wake of the explosion, investigators from police and WorkSafe moved on to the site to begin piecing together how the incident happened.
Investigators looked for health and safety documentation provided to Ackers by Salter and found nothing. There was no induction when they turned up at the yard that day - and no list of hazards. The visitors book was rarely used and “hot work” certificates were not often issued for welding.
WorkSafe’s concern about compliance and safety was such it issued “prohibition notices” to order certain work to halt, such as the distillation plant used to recycle oil. The intent of the order was to reduce the risk of a new explosion by stopping “flammable vapours or substances” escaping. In October 2015 a fresh “prohibition order” was issued and personally handed to Salter.
In contravention of the order, Salter started recycling oil through the distillation plant on February 4, 2016. A few days later, he posted to Facebook that it was “music to my ears: first load in five months cooked and ready for delivery, now to start making money again”, according to police evidence.
On February 16, WorkSafe visited to find vapour escaping from a pipe atop the distillation machine which triggered a “flammable alarm” when gas monitoring equipment was used. Within two metres of the vapour, WorkSafe saw a contractor using a battery-powered drill - a potential ignition source. The problem had still not been resolved when WorkSafe visited on March 3.
When Judge Richard McIlraith passed sentence on Salter and his company in November 2017, he said: “It is hard to imagine a more flagrant breach of prohibition notice than has occurred in this case.”
Fines and reparations totalled about $400,000 while Salter was sentenced to 4½ months of home detention.
Ackers’ company also faced a single health and safety charge to which he pleaded guilty and received a discharge without conviction.
When the fight back began
In the wake of her son’s death, Ferguson was devastated. There were days where she didn’t want to leave the sofa.
Over that time, so much of what happened seemed out of her control. It was a story in the Herald, a post-conviction interview with Salter, that began the fight back.
In it, he said: “We made mistakes, no two ways about it. I’ll wear that scar for the rest of my life, along with the family. I can’t put it right. Money can’t put it right.”
For Ferguson, the story gave greater weight to Salter’s anguish and insufficient to Bowring’s family.
She lodged a complaint with the Media Council and had it upheld - this reporter was criticised for not making greater effort to contact her for comment.
The finding affirmed for Ferguson her role as Bowring’s mother and the impact she could have on events. In the years following, spurred to action, Ferguson set about finding a balance to the injustice of losing a child. There were emails to politicians, WorkSafe, Auckland Council and coroner.
In one email to the coroner, she wrote: “The hardest part to swallow is the governing agencies knew how bad Mr Salter’s practices were … yet not one of these organisations monitored accordingly.
“I really do feel a public apology from WorkSafe to Jamey and his family is warranted due to the original and continued failings.”
When told by WorkSafe a scheduled inspection was due to take place, she wanted to know “why inspections aren’t random”. WorkSafe letters to Ferguson offered assurances the company was compliant and scheduled inspections were more practical than surprise visits.
On September 22, 2022, WorkSafe carried out an inspection - and issued five “improvement notices” - a step down from the “prohibition notice” issued when risks pose a threat to health and life.
None of the matters identified were “causative of the incident or non-complying in 2015″, she was told in a letter from WorkSafe’s Darren Handforth, manager of its high hazards and public safety team.
In another, he wrote: “I can confirm that WorkSafe’s visit to Salters Cartage on 28 September 2022 was the first in-person site visit since your son’s tragic death.” The WorkSafe inspection found a compound wall where a hole had been cut to run electrical equipment, insufficient separation between a diesel tank and an off-site protected place, an underground fuel tank without a current stationary container certificate and “failing to maintain separation distance from protected places and public places for storage of petrol and diesel”.
When the “proceeds of crime” case started, it offered Ferguson a fresh place to lodge her concerns.
Ferguson petitioned politicians repeatedly, raising concerns about regulatory action that hadn’t been taken but she thought should occur. “It is devastating to lose my son but I lived in hope that a lesson had been learnt preventing it happening to another family.”
Former workplace relations and safety minister Michael Wood replied: “Everyone who goes to work should come home healthy and safe. Sadly, for too many New Zealanders, that is not the reality. While WorkSafe has made significant progress to improve health and safety outcomes and prevent fatalities in the workplace, there is still more to do.”
Her efforts weren’t just aimed at Salters Cartage. She proposed solutions, intent on no other contractor finding themselves working on a site where the chance of injury or death was part of going to work.
The Coroner’s ruling
For those living from contract to contract, Ferguson said the current system placed an unreasonable expectation of faith in the health and safety practices of the places they worked.
One solution, she said, was to develop a scheme in which workplaces had to put up a front-gate sticker identifying it as a dangerous workplace and signalling that it was not compliant with health and safety laws. That would give contractors an assurance they were working somewhere that took their wellbeing seriously, she said.
A formal coronial hearing wasn’t held, instead submissions were made and the inquest was conducted “on the papers”.
After waiting almost nine years, this week the outcome left Ferguson deflated.
In one sense, it laid to rest rumours to which Ferguson had paid no heed but left her deeply troubled. The autopsy discovered signs of marijuana use in Bowring’s body. In one Facebook post, Salter had claimed “the welder was stoned”. The coroner’s report dismisses that entirely.
An expert studied CCTV footage. In the 11 seconds prior to the explosion, there was a bright orange glow on top of the silo where Bowring was working. The flashes were “too large and bright to be from someone trying to ignite a cigarette”, said the expert. Rather, he said they matched up with Bowring grinding or welding.
Ferguson was asked by the Coroner what changes she believed were necessary: she talked of stickers denoting non-compliance on the front gate of businesses; a compliance database to track gaps; a framework to ensure independence of inspectors and; more frequent inspections for those who had previously been found to have operated unlawfully.
WorkSafe told the coroner its focus on the waste oil industry had stepped up since 2015. There was now a routine cycle of inspections. There was also WorkSafe’s new guidance for the industry - issued in February 2023 - on how to reduce explosion risk when cutting or welding fuel tanks.
Better co-operation was also an improvement, it said. WorkSafe, unaware Auckland Council issued an abatement notice in August 2015, said there were other cases of local government enforcement action of which it was unaware until it was too late. If it had known, “it could have intervened”. It now worked to engage with councils.
While WorkSafe had not visited the site between 2015 and 2022, Auckland Council licensing and regulatory compliance manager James Hassall said its routine inspections over the past five years had identified issues: In January 2020 there was information missing that was required for resource consent; a site inspection in March 2021 found up-to-date information was required (and subsequently provided); a renewed consent required in January 2022 highlighted areas for improvement along with updated management documents and previously requested reports. The consent was renewed in April 2024.
In the end, Ferguson’s sticker idea didn’t make it. On the other recommendations, the Coroner ruled they were largely in place as a result of changes since 2015.
For Ferguson, it didn’t go far enough. And it seemed, in her opinion, that the changes made were more about her campaigning and less about WorkSafe regulating the industry.
In a statement the regulator said: “When businesses don’t comply with the law and meet their responsibilities, WorkSafe will hold them to account, as it did following the tragic and avoidable death of Mr Bowring.”
Salters Cartage Ltd responded to the Coroner’s report - and questions sparked by the interview with Ferguson - in a statement, reiterating the “tragedy” of Jamey’s death and saying the report does not add anything new for the company. “Salters only wants to operate safely and to avoid any other potential for injury or loss of life. The company remains focused on that. Sadly, that cannot undo the past errors made or compensate for the family’s understandable loss or the grief they clearly continue to feel.”
‘Do we wait until someone dies?’
The health and safety failings at Salters Cartage existed in spite of Ron Salter’s clear engagement over compliance issues.
Evidence in the High Court file shows his active interest in how his competitors ran their businesses - and how the entire waste fuel industry operated.
In 2000, there was evidence Salter was involved in developing the Environmental Protection Authority’s “Guidelines for the Management and Handling of Used Oil”.
In 2012, Salter was again involved in discussions around new standards for handling used oil. EPA principal scientist Peter Dawson, who was involved in the discussions, told police of health and safety-related emails he received from Salter.
In June 2012, Salter wrote: “It is now time to stop the cowboys or do we wait until someone blows themselves up or worse still kills someone …”. In another email the same day, Salter took credit for the work under way, saying “it has taken two years to get this group together” and was the result of “myself continually complaining about illegal operations”.
The work led to new standards being developed by a stakeholder group that included Salter - “Management and Handling of Used Oil”.
WorkSafe’s investigation report and evidence in the High Court file of the “proceeds of crime” case showed Salter repeatedly raised concerns about competing companies.
In 2010 and 2011, EPA scientist Dawson said he was aware of complaints by Salter that a competitor was “collecting and using waste oil as a heating oil for glasshouse operations” with storage requirements that did not comply with guidelines in place at the time.
In 2014 Salter sought details on a competitor through the Official Information Act - then emailed WorkSafe, saying: “‘The whole industry is a joke .... How and who do I see to try and stop this industry killing some one?”
In 2015, Salter sought information from WorkSafe about an Auckland-based competitor. He wanted to know “were the inspectors lied to” and “why was this site not shut down when the site was found to be operating illegally?”
Police evidence was that Salters Cartage did not achieve full legal compliance until March 15, 2016, “and therefore all prior income generated from this activity was derived from significant criminal activity”.
Court documents put the amount of money sought by police at $11m.
The family home, the Salter holiday home on Waiheke, the business and other property are restrained and cannot be sold without police consent.
Evidence presented in the “proceeds of crime” case included Salter’s history of criminal and traffic violations. It listed nine offences from 1974 to 2008 - including a previous fatal incident. On October 29, 1988, Salter was convicted of careless driving causing death.
Ferguson is aware the “proceeds of crime” case has caused concern across the business community. The court has described it as “novel” use of a law developed, according to the Hansard record of Parliament, around concern over organised crime figures profiting from methamphetamine manufacture and sale.
Salter’s arguments in and outside court about the possible impact on other businesses was “scaremongering”, she said. “I don’t believe police are going to take your assets just because you’ve breached health and safety laws. Why would they if you’re not operating in a criminal manner? This was years of offending that resulted in Jamey’s death.”
Even though she has no role in the “proceeds of crime” case, Ferguson applauds police for its step in taking the action.
“All he has to do is prove he earned his money legally and he gets to keep his stuff.”
Ferguson said she believed some industries were smothered by health and safety regulation but Bowring’s death showed how dangerous the waste fuel industry could be.
“Jamey didn’t come home and people have the right to come home. If [police] actions make businesses pull their socks up and adhere to the law and save somebody’s life, well - fantastic.
“If it makes your kids come home - even one of them - it’s job well done.”
Salter has told the Herald he served his time when convicted of the charges in 2017. “Why are they trying me twice,” he asked. “I don’t think you can ever put a value on a life. However, I’ve done my time, we’ve paid the fines. This, if it continues, will collapse Salters.”
The “proceeds of crime” case is set down for an extended hearing in October this year.
David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He joined the Herald in 2004.