Benjamin Blake was the sole survivor of a crash that killed his four mates near Ōhakune as they drove home from an indoor football game nearly 11 years ago. He’s finally ready to face the past, writes Anna Leask.
It took Benjamin Blake nearly 11 years to decide he was ready to hear the details.
In the first 20 or so days after the crash, it was the last thing on his mind - with “the anesthesia, the trauma, and the fear” taking up every second of his existence.
After that it was getting back to his home in Chile, to rehab, to life.
The crash was never far from his thoughts - when you lose four mates that way it never can be - but he just could not bring himself to ask the questions.
The how, the why and the what happened after.
“It’s not that I want to look back now and I didn’t before,” Blake explained to the Herald on Sunday.
“Perhaps after all this time, I feel more prepared to learn about the details that I probably preferred not to have present.
“It’s been 10 years since the accident, and I’m completely sure that something reminds me of it every day - it’s been a constant review. And not just as something purely traumatic - which it certainly was - but as an event that was part of my life and that changed everything.”
Blake arrived in New Zealand in March 2012 with his girlfriend, Macarena (now his wife), on a working holiday.
They started to look for jobs as soon as they touched down and were hired to work at the Whakapapa ski centre.
Through work, the couple made friends with Agustin Donofrio and his partner and their flatmate, German Caceres - and Blake bonded with the men over the common “passion and dedication to football”.
It was that passion that would lead to tragedy.
It was a Wednesday when the crash happened. July 11. 2012. At 10.15pm.
Blake, Donofrio, Carceres and two other mates, Nicholas Ursic and Pucheta Luciano, played their first football match of the season in a new team named the Whakapapa Boys - a nod to the skifield where they all worked.
They spent about 20 minutes chatting afterwards, reliving the best and worst bits of the game, talking about their favourite teams and players.
Then they waved goodbye to the organiser, saying they would be back next week.
Ten minutes later Donofrio, 25, Caceres, 35, Ursic, 27, and Luciano, 19 were dead.
Blake was rushed to Waikato Hospital in a serious condition with a broken left leg, two broken bones in his left forearm, two broken ribs and grazes on his body.
He underwent several surgeries - supported by his father, Eric, who travelled to Hamilton from Chile - and spent more than 20 days in the hospital before he was well enough to return home.
When he was well enough he released a statement from his hospital bed, recalling the crash and the aftermath.
“Back we went from Ōhakune, talking about the game and I think we had not spent more than 10 minutes driving . . . I see giant lights dazzling our eyes, I have no memory of shouting . . . after a long silence, I start to hear the loud sound of a helicopter and many screams of people.
“I do not remember anything I saw and I could not feel my body.
“A few hours later I woke up in a bed and four people looked at me from above and asked me questions; I did not understand anything.
“After a few hours, my girlfriend, Macarena, entered the room, hugged me, and we cried. She explained to me what had happened and that my four friends had died.”
Blake, 36, told the Herald on Sunday he was interviewed by police in his hospital bed about his memory of the crash - but did not hear from them again.
After the police investigation was completed the matter was referred to Coroner Tim Scott, who released findings in 2013 - but these were not provided to Blake.
He said he had been able to get hospital information from ACC but otherwise was in the dark about the investigation into the crash that killed his four friends.
“I never had access to a legal resolution of the case, nor to an investigation,” he says.
“There were four people who died, and I never had access to issues related to the legal aspect or contacts for a possible investigation of the facts.
“It was strange. I never had information on a conclusion of the case judicially.
“I returned to Chile, and what came out in the newspapers became the official version - I never knew who we collided with, if the truck driver was injured, if he represented a company.”
But despite the questions, he didn’t feel strong enough to seek out the truth.
Until now.
“I need to piece together the story. Why after so much time? I tried to be satisfied with that version, but I need to confirm it.”
The Herald on Sunday obtained Scott’s final report and provided them to Blake.
While the information was “very strong” and hard to process, he said for the first time - he had some answers.
“I got a little dizzy reading the document,” he said.
“I didn’t know most of the information described there.”
Scott said that after the football game, Caceres began to drive the group from Ohakune to National Park where they were living and working.
Caceres caught up with a New Zealand Post truck on a “short section of straight road” between two blind corners.
Scott, who was personally familiar with the road, said it was not uncommon for drivers to “become frustrated” if they were travelling behind a slower vehicle and be tempted to overtake on the short straight.
“There may be sufficient room to pass another vehicle safely if the manoeuvre is commenced at the beginning of the straight section of roadway,” he said.
“But if the manoeuvre is left until later, the available portion of the roadway which is straight and visible is insufficient to enable a passing manoeuvre to be completed safely before the blind right-hand corner if any traffic appears around that corner travelling south.
“That is what happened.”
Scott said as Caceres attempted to overtake the truck, another truck towing a large trailer approached from the opposite direction.
“It was only then that it was visible to German and only then that German’s vehicle was visible to that truck driver.
“[The truck driver] said that as he approached the area where the crash occurred he had seen lights on the road and he therefore knew something was coming the other way but that he did not expect anything to be in his lane.
“When he got around the corner there were two sets of headlights right there - the car was right in his lane overtaking the truck and both were coming towards him.
“The left headlight of the car was right in front of him. There was half a second, if that. He braked and then the crash happened.”
The NZ Post truck driver did not see the impact.
The driver of a car travelling behind the truck and trailer said he saw sparks come from the left-hand side of the vehicle, which shook, swerved and ploughed into a roadside ditch.
“It is self-evident why this crash happened. Little needs to be said about it. The facts speak for themselves,” said the Coroner.
“German commenced a passing manoeuvre in a place where it was unsafe to do so. He did not realise that the truck was approaching and a head-on collision occurred.”
Scott ruled the truck driver was “in no way responsible or to blame” for the crash - but never should have been on the road at the time.
During the police investigation, it emerged that he was driving in excess of his legal driving hours for that day and should have “parked up for a rest break” about 80km or one hour before the crash.
“Had he done so German would not have collided with his truck - because his truck, obviously, would not have been there to collide with. It would have been parked up at some other place,” said the Coroner.
The driver was later convicted for an offence relating to driving hours.
Scott wondered “if the crash would have occurred at all” if the driver had followed the rules.
Ultimately, he believed it would have.
“If the truck had been parked up, could German have completed his passing manoeuvre without incident - simply because the truck was not there to be involved in the crash?
“That was of course a possibility.
“However [the driver behind the truck] provided evidence that he had been travelling behind for about five minutes. It therefore follows that if [the] truck had not been where it was then [the other] vehicle would have been in the same approximate position and German’s station wagon would have crashed head-on into [it] instead of the truck
“The only difference would have been that two vehicles of approximately the same size and weight would have been involved in a head-on crash.”
Scott said it would be “casting too long a bow” to suggest that the crash was any worse because a truck was involved or suggest that the fatalities may not have happened.
“Thus I conclude that although [the truck driver] should have been parked up in his truck at the time of the crash, the crash would not have been avoided if he had been,” he said.
“German would simply have collided with the car rather than the truck and the result would probably have been the same if not worse in terms of fatalities and injuries.”
He ruled that all four men died as a result of injuries related to “high energy impact”.
Caceres died as a result of thoraco-abdominal injuries, Ursic of multiple head, neck, pelvic and limb injuries; Donofrio of multiple head, left facial thoraco-abdominal pelvic, left upper and lower limb injuries and Luciano of thoraco-abdominal injuries and left femoral fracture.
Scott recommended that double yellow no-passing lines be painted at the crash site, which Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency has done.
Blake said reading the full Coroner’s report for the first time was difficult - but he needed to do it.
“After 10 years I know the story in more detail - clearly I hadn’t wanted to do it before.”
He revealed that when he got back to Chile after he had recovered, he travelled to Argentina twice.
“I met three of the four families of my friends involved,” he said.
“I had the feeling that I couldn’t satisfy them with details and doubts they had about the accident.
“The truth is, I knew the same as they did, even less because, at that time, I didn’t want to know more.
“I think we needed an official version.”
Blake said the official report could only help him process the tragedy so much.
“I believe that these events do not have a definitive ‘closure’ - one is always in search of answers,” he said.
“I was lucky to survive and be healthy, to be able to continue with my life without setbacks.
“Sometimes I think that the closure of my accident is to go back to New Zealand and travel that route from Ōhakune to National Park again - which gave and took so much from us.
“Walking up Mt Ruapehu, going through Waikato Hospital, going back to the National Park, visiting so many places that we have not yet seen.
“I would love to.”
The pause in aid affects health, education, and tourism marketing.