By ELEANOR BLACK
The following is a re-edited version of this story. Please see correction note at end.
A Dutch tourist drowned when she was trapped under a rock for five hours while rafting the Rangitaiki River near Murupara yesterday.
Brenda Kraaij, aged 36, was in an eight-person raft which had just reached
the first rapid when it flipped.
Her partner, who had been sitting next to her in the raft, watched helplessly as efforts to retrieve her from the strong current failed.
Rafting crew and police took five hours to free the woman's body.
Sergeant John Wilson of Murupara said the woman would be named today.
The Maritime Safety Authority will investigate.
Rivers are graded on an international system according to their level of difficulty. Grade one is the easiest and grade six the most difficult.
The Rangitaiki is rated grade four because of its difficult rapids, irregular waves, whirlpools and exposed rocks.
Last night, the project manager of Water Safety New Zealand, Brendon Ward, said 60 people had drowned in rafting and tubing-related accidents since 1980.
Other rafting deaths include Carol Palmer, aged 26, from Hawaii, who died on the Shotover River in 1995, and English tourist Andrew Pearson, 30, who was killed in 1996 in a blackwater rafting accident on the Nile River, about 30km south of Westport.
Also in that year, a 49-year-old Thai tourist drowned on the Shotover when a whitewater raft flipped in the Toilet Rapid.
CORRECTION
24.01.2001
A report in the Herald yesterday on the Murupara rafting fatality named the wrong river raft operator.
The dead woman had been on a raft operated by Raftabout Wilderness Expeditions, not River Rats, as reported.
Mr Chris Yabsley, who was quoted in the article, is the operations manager of Raftabout and not River Rats, as stated.
The only connection between River Rats and the incident was that a member of that company - which had another raft on the river around that time - was at the scene very soon after the raft overturned and worked for many hours on the recovery.
The Herald regrets the error and apologises to River Rats rafting and staff for any distress caused.
