Crash tragedy: 'You can't do it alone'

Abi Hone. Photo / supplied

A mother and academic whose 12-year-old daughter died in a horror triple fatal car crash has used her personal tragedy as a remarkable case study in how tight-knit communities can help people survive extreme trauma.

Lucy Hone's daughter Abi died when Dutch businessman Johannes Jacobus Appelman ran a stop sign near Rakaia on Queen's Birthday weekend.

Her friend Ella Summerfield, also 12, and Ella's 49-year old mother, Sally were also killed in the tragedy.

Now, Mrs Hone, a PhD student in exercise psychology at AUT, has told of how her personal traumatic experiences in losing a child reinforced her academic research on the importance of communities in resilience and coping with tragedies.

She gave a keynote talk on resilience at University of Canterbury today.

Husband Trevor and her were visiting friends at Ohau, some four hours away, when they were informed of their daughter's death.

Police officers drove the distraught parents back to Christchurch.

They visited Christchurch Hospital before finally arriving at their Sumner home in the city at 5am the following day.

Two hours later, friends started arriving at their home.

"When your child dies, your close knit people run to you," Mrs Hone said.

Later that morning, the Hones and the local community gathered at Cave Rock in Sumner

Mrs Hone showed the second annual New Zealand tertiary engagement summit at the University of Canterbury photographs of the poignant gathering.

"With big, traumatic events you can't do it on your own. Together we are so much stronger than one individual could ever be. You can't do it alone," she said.

As part of her work at the Human Potential Centre in Auckland, New Zealand's first ever national wellbeing survey has been carried out.

Results from more than 10,000 adult respondents from all over the country found that those who feel close to people in their local area are four times more likely to experience the highest levels of wellbeing.

Volunteering makes people feel good physically and emotionally, giving them a "helper's high", research shows.

Mrs Hone, who spoke of her interest in taking academic research findings and seeing how they play out in the real world, says community engagement is a "two-way street".

"I like to think of resilient communities as super-organisms where the whole is so much stronger, and more able, than the sum of its individual parts," she said.

"However strong we are as individuals, we desperately need our communities to shore us up in tough times."

She highlighted the experience of her 16-year old son Ed.

In the days after her sister's death, he went to Facebook to express his emotions.

In it, he wrote at being touched by seeing "the boys and girls I had grown up with and knew so well" rallying around them.

He vowed that in the future, "sure as hell, I'll be there when you need me".