Emergency services on the scene at Abbey Caves on May 9, 2023, where 15‑year‑old Karnin Petera (inset) died. Photo / NZME
On the night before a fatal school caving trip, MetService escalated its weather warning to severe and parents fired off urgent emails to the school.
But their concerns carried no weight and the Whangārei Boys’ High School excursion went ahead, with fatal consequences.
As week two of the inquest into the death of 15‑year‑old Karnin Petera opened, the staff who made those decisions began giving evidence, including one who admitted he was looking at other data and not the alerts.
“I should have paid more attention to other things than the things I did pay attention to,” said a male Whangārei Boys’ High staff member, who has name suppression.
The inquest, conducted by Coroner Alexander Ho in the Whangārei District Court, is examining how the risks of the excursion were identified, assessed and managed, before the trip and once the group was inside the caves.
Other focuses will be on adequate information about the dangers of entering the caves and where the responsibility lies to update weather information.
Karnin Petera’s parents Alicia Toki and Andre Petera told the coroner they support the caves being closed permanently and also want the public to factor in a larger margin of error when the weather is poor.
Heavy rain had soaked Whangārei for days before the May 9, 2023, school trip to Abbey Caves, where water can reach chest height even in normal conditions.
A severe weather warning was issued that morning as Petera entered the cave with 16 classmates.
Inside, the water rose rapidly, trapping him between rocks as others escaped. A large search‑and‑rescue operation followed, with local plumbers using underwater cameras to locate his body 10 hours later.
The school board was later prosecuted and ordered to pay more than $500,000.
One of the staff involved in planning the trip gave evidence he was watching the rain radar in the days prior and it was his understanding a heavy, “red” band of rain would hit Whangārei on the Tuesday afternoon.
On Sunday, MetService issued an orange heavy rain watch for Northland for Tuesday between 3am and 6pm and then escalated to a severe weather warning on the Monday.
That severe warning was alerted again on the MetService website at 9.15am on Tuesday.
A group of boys from the school had been through the caves on the Monday with no issues and because of the forecast, a decision was made to bring the Tuesday trip forward by an hour so the boys would be out of the caves by midday.
The excursion was entering the Organ Cave where water originates from a sump further inland.
The male staff member who cannot be identified said from his experience it was not known to flood.
He said the only way to tell if the cave is filling with water was by checking the entrance, and it was his understanding the water was at the normal ankle-deep height.
The night before the trip, the staff member received three emails from concerned parents, including Toki, however, one of those emails went into his spam.
The Peteras’ lawyer Ellie Harrison asked him whether he accepted this was an indication of the anxiety parents were feeling as the rain poured.
“They probably saw there was an orange rain warning and that their child was going caving and so they’re concerned,” he responded.
“I’ve looked at the more detailed maps so I was confident they’d be out [of the caves] before those warnings would affect Abbey Caves.”
The man said the staff relied on the three-day weather forecast and had been keeping an eye on a band of rain that had not changed in three days. The band was travelling down the country from the north.
At 7.30am, MetService had an orange rain radar displayed directly over Abbey Caves and the lawyer for the coroner asked why the warnings and text information did not factor into his decision-making.
“Much of the forecast from what I was looking at hadn’t changed, everything was tracking as it had been forecast from Monday. We were confident that three-day forecast was telling right,” he said.
Harrison also asked why hadn’t the orange and heavy rain warnings been heeded.
“It was respected and heeded, but again, we were certain it was linked to that band of rain coming across. We definitely took that into account. We dug deeper and looked at the maps and information we had available to give us a more informed decision.”
He said he didn’t realise he should be giving more attention to the MetService text descriptions or warnings rather than the images of the three-day forecast.
“Do you agree orange was a good enough indicator to call off the trip?” Harrison asked.
“In hindsight. But we were sure it was the red band of rain coming across,” he responded.
Harrison referred to a staff member’s statement from the WorkSafe investigation, which went into her experience of going to the man saying she was concerned the trip was still going ahead.
“She said to you ‘this is absolutely terrible’ and you responded with ‘it’s fine’,” she put to him.
“I don’t recall that and I think my statement says that,” he responded.
The man did not go to the caves but when he arrived on the scene just after 10am the caves were “unlike anything he had ever seen”.
He said the water was 2-3m high and in all his years caving at the site, he had never seen it like that before.
It was his understanding the Organ cave drained quickly and said “I never thought it could have got to the height it got to”.
He said the situation they were faced with was not one the school had provided any guidance for, which forced the staff to make a decision “on the ground”.
The man accepted he, or anyone above him, could have cancelled the trip anytime, including that morning.
Coroner Ho said to the man there were strong opinions in the community questioning why the trip wasn’t cancelled given there was an orange warning.
The man accepted he could not recall if he had read the alerts the previous night.
Coroner Ho asked if he had any final comments.
“I just really hope that Alicia and Andre get the answers to all of the questions they must have.”
The staff who accompanied the students into the cave are expected to give evidence this week.
Shannon Pitman is a Whangārei-based reporter for Open Justice covering courts in the Te Tai Tokerau region. She is of Ngāpuhi/ Ngāti Pūkenga descent and has worked in digital media for the past five years. She joined NZME in 2023.