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Karnin Petera, 15, died while on a caving excursion with Whangārei Boys’ High. Northland was under a severe heavy rain warning at the time. Staff have told the inquest, they were watching the rain radar and believed heavy rain was due later in the day. The school Board of Trustees was charged and paid more than $500,000 reparation. The inquest is being conducted before Coroner Alexander Ho at the Whangārei District Court. A teacher has described the moment he thought he was going to die while trying to save students on a deadly trip to Abbey Caves. Speaking publicly for the first time, the teacher said the water inside the cave rose from about 7.5cm to neck-high within 10 seconds, pulling him under as he fought for air and tried to save the boys around him. “I was pinned against the rock with the water holding me in place. I had one hand free which I could use to help the students,” he said at an inquest into the death of one of the students, Karnin Petera. “I knew I had to try to block the river flow with my body so I could stop any student that came my way and lift them over my shoulder to safety.” A small group were stuck in the neck-deep water, one of whom the teacher managed to grab as he started to go under. Dragged down by the current, the teacher struggled to stay upright while still holding the boy. “The water was now pulling very hard and I started feeling the water lapping over my face.” Terrified and fearing for his life the teacher managed to get the students out, at one stage floating a boy over the top of his own body and pulling another out of the fast flowing water and into his arms. Once outside, he began vomiting from the water he had swallowed and broke down when a student said, “Karnin’s not here.” The trip went ahead despite weather warnings The 15-year-old’s death on May 2, 2023, is now the focus of the inquest before Coroner Alexander Ho at the Whangārei District Court. Northland had been under an orange weather warning for days and it was upgraded to a heavy‑rain warning the night before the trip. The first Whangārei Boys’ High School trip to Abbey Caves, held the previous day, had gone ahead without incident. Staff had been tracking a three‑day forecast and a heavy rain band on MetService, and chose to leave 30 minutes earlier and limit the second excursion to one cave instead of three. They believed the rain was due to hit Whangārei later in the afternoon. The teacher, who has name suppression, said it was standard practice to cancel outdoor events only under red warnings, not orange. He said Whangārei often experienced sunshine during orange alerts, and because the warning covered a broad area from Kaipara to the Cape, staff relied on localised maps showing only light rain for Whangārei. “I had always been taught the rain radar and weather maps were far more important,” he said. At the inquest hearing he was asked: “Were you aware an orange warning includes a statement ‘heavy rain may cause streams and rivers to rise rapidly?’” “Yes,” he replied. He said the boys were excited and had been briefed to stay close, communicate clearly and follow instructions. At the entrance to Organ Cave, the water was ankle‑deep – normal, he said, based on his years of experience. “The water was not moving any faster than normal, it was hazy brown, nothing unusual about this. I checked for landslides, there were none.” Around 200m in, the passage split – one route rising into an upper chamber, the other dropping toward the river. The water, he said, was still stagnant. ‘It was not an option to stay’ The boys sat beneath glow worms for a brief meditation before moving on to a point known as “the squeeze”. It was there he noticed the shift. “I noticed the water was brown and more water was flowing and the overall noise o...
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