The widow of a man who died after being swept away by floodwaters has recounted how she discovered her husband had been killed.
Dave Young, 58, died in the north Waikato town of Onewhero when he was taken by a flooded stream on Allen and Eyre Rd on January 27, 2023.
His widow Jane Young described the entire tragedy to a coroner’s inquest today, revealing she feels guilt about the fateful night.
“I can’t get out of my head that the last thing my beloved Dave saw was just blackness, absolute pitch-black blackness; and the roar of that water, it was so loud.”
The pair met in 1997, became a couple the following year and married in 2004. She said they developed a bond that made her feel complete.
“He didn’t want to die,” she said.
“David doted on the grandchildren. He used to say he couldn’t wait until he could teach them things.
“It’s sad for him that he didn’t have the opportunity to spend more time with them, and particularly for them to miss out on having such a loving grandad in their lives.”
Young told the inquest she was helping in the kitchen at the Onewhero Golf Club the night of the floods.
Her husband came down later for dinner.
They were unaware of the seriousness of the weather, believing it to be just a bit of heavy rain. They did not receive any weather warnings or alerts.
“The restaurant was busy with diners, none of whom were aware of anything untoward, except the fact it was raining heavily and it was a very dark night,” she said.
He went home to Allen and Eyre Rd about 8pm. Dashcam footage from his car showed the road had not flooded at that time.
Jane Young said she headed for home about 8.40pm but her route was blocked when she came across an overflowing culvert spilling water and debris over the road.
“I just wanted to get home and I was so close. I was frightened and the car was misting up. There were no streetlights in the countryside, it was such a dark night with very little moonlight.”
She called her husband at home to come pick her up.
He got into his car and drove to get her. His dashcam footage showed he came across water quickly filling the valley and covering the road at a known trouble spot.
“Under normal circumstances, the flooding at this point in the road would be at most 30 to 40cm at the deepest point,” she said.
“At the point, where you would usually have expected to rise out of the water, Dave was just getting deeper and deeper until the car stopped. The dashcam keeps recording even after Dave left the car, showing water eventually gets to the roof of the car.
“It’s a short drive from our house to where I was stuck, so when it had been a little bit of time, I began to get worried. I kept phoning Dave over and over. I kept pacing up and down, looking for headlights coming up the hill towards me.
“I never saw any headlights, so after a while, in desperation, I decided I needed to get help. I called our new neighbour, Andrew Pedersen.”
Pedersen took his tractor out to find Dave Young.
“I now know that Andrew was talking to Dave, that Dave had walked back through the flood about 150m in the direction that he had come from. They told me Dave was trying to walk back out of the water,” Jane Young said.
“Dave was directing Andrew, who was in his tractor, as Andrew couldn’t see the edge of the road. Andrew said they couldn’t quite get near enough, and Dave was trying to get towards them.
“But he lost his grip on the branches he was holding, and he was washed away.”
Young said she wants authorities to learn from the inquest and hoped emergency procedures could be improved.
She said some of what she had heard at the inquest so far had been a “defensive attitude” from authorities and that they were following procedure – “well, if that’s the case, maybe the manual needs rewriting”.
“I’m doing this [giving evidence to the inquest], because I need to be Dave’s voice.”
Raphael Franks is an Auckland-based reporter who covers business, breaking news and local stories from Tāmaki Makaurau. He joined the Herald as a Te Rito cadet in 2022.
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