Army tragedy on Mt Ruapehu - new details revealed

its not ruapehus largest tragedy, 13 died in a plane crash and then there was the tangiwai rail disaster from the lahar from the crater lake taking out the rail bridge.. 151 dead.

I sometimes wonder why stories such as this surface after such a long period of time? What purpose do they serve? Enquiries, yes, sometimes more than one are held, the findings made public and blame or no blame are apportioned as judged to be adequate. So why drag it back into the public view after such an extraordinary period of time? Why drag it back for those that have moved on and accepted that the investigations are complete? Or is it in some cases the media trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, something that in this day and age is all too common, especially if it is a slow news week. It is totally incomprehensible to me.

to forget the past is to repeat the mistakes of the past

Can't say I go along with that quote Waynowski. We humans are a fickle lot with a habit of repeating the past no matter how many times we are reminded of the futility of it. Guess it is one of those times when agreeing to disagree is the only answer.

burying the past will make it worse, a lot of people will pay attention to articles like this, I think it saves lives, if you dont like the articles, don't read them, it's your choice, you know you don't like them already. i'm on an aussie tramping forum and a lot of them are pretty ignorant of what NZ conditions are like, the only way to make some believe is to post news articles of what really happens to people here when things go wrong. sometimes its the only way to get some people to listen, its not a game, its not a walk on the beach...

This will always be a black mark on the army and a footnote in history. It's always going to be an important example to learn from. Whatever's come out recently might be important, especially for the people who were closely involved. I remember this event from when it happened, and seeing it in media now brings back memories. Where I draw the line, though, is in judging today's army based on something that happened 27 years ago. At some point it's necessary to give people a chance to learn and to change to address the problems. It's not like it's the only group of people to utterly screw up in this type of scenario, though. The list is endless, with some ending in tragic accidents and some people getting lucky. Not so long ago the NZ Alpine Club which, probably uncontestably, is packed full of people who are highly skilled in alpine conditions, hosted an expedition on Taranaki that was an appalling failure in almost every respect. Two people died, and another two probably came close to it, and the scene was chaos because of a failure to lead and coordinate the group and make good decisions. Even that, though, is a reflection of what happened that day and how it panned out. The fact that it happened doesn't mean that others elsewhere in the Alpine Club would have done the same. It doesn't mean that everyone involved on the day was fundamentally incompetent. It doesn't mean the same people would act the same way again, or even that they'd have acted in that way in slightly different circumstances. For the most part, nobody's judging the Alpine Club's competence based on an horrific incident courtesy of its Auckland Section, even if particular individuals are being criticised for how they acted at the time. Sometimes things go wrong, ideally not often but sometimes tragically. Statistically people aren't going to stop making mistakes, but we need to learn from it to try to minimise those mistakes and reduce their consequences. At times we need to hold people accountable or justify why that's not appropriate to do so, but at some time it's necessary to enable everyone to move on, and treat people for who they are now rather than who they might have been a long time ago.

You make a good point there wayno. Likewise izogi.

It's ironic as the Army put huge emphasis on leadership and leadership training. Perhaps this wouldn't happen nowadays. I met someone yesterday whose outdoor instructing brother is involved in putting army leaders under stresses equivalent to battlefield situations so their leadership skills become rapidly deployable. Of course being very cold and underslept would be a good example of such stress.

possibly junior leaders were given too much leeway and not enough relevant decision making training back then for their skills, leading to the situation where they were in a situation that was too dangerous