A coroner has urged schools across New Zealand to take more care over outdoor trips after finding that organisers of a Whangārei Boys' High School caving excursion had an "overly optimistic" tolerance of risk, RNZ reports. Karnin "Tino" Petera, 15, died in 2023 when a flash flood trapped the group in Abbey Caves near Whangārei while Northland was under an orange heavy rain warning. Sixteen other pupils, a teacher and an instructor survived.
Coroner Ho found the organisers relied on hourly local rainfall forecasts and misread them, not realising each figure covered the hour before the stated time. The storm also arrived earlier than expected. He said there was confusion over who could cancel the trip and on what grounds, and noted that MetService's caveats about its data were only visible after clicking an icon.
Source: RNZ
