A whitewater sports expert has told a Queenstown court hearing that a rescue rope could have saved the life of a young English woman who drowned while riverboarding in the Kawarau Gorge last year.
The belief that ropes and knives could become hazards themselves in white-water situations was "ill-informed and uneducated", a white-water rafting guide and former New Zealand kayaking representative told Judge Brian Callaghan in the Queenstown District Court yesterday.
Appearing as Maritime New Zealand's expert witness in the prosecution following the death of English tourist Emily Jordan during a Mad Dog River Boarding trip on the Kawarau River last year, Donald Calder said carrying a rope would have increased the guides' chances of rescuing her alive.
Black Sheep Adventures Ltd, trading as Mad Dog River Boarding, and its managing director, Brad McLeod, are both defending three Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 charges of failing to take all practicable steps to ensure Ms Jordan's, their employees' and other customers' safety, brought by Maritime New Zealand.
On the third day of the hearing, Mr Calder said although there were differences between white-water activities such as kayaking, rafting and river boarding, once a person was out of their vessel, they were all in the same situation.
All white-water participants should expect entrapments because they were "fairly common" and in the past 23 years, he had been involved in a number of entrapment rescues - including of himself.
Although ropes in throw bags did not guarantee a successful rescue, Mr Calder said "most" did, while "some have involved injury and some death".
He said all white-water guides should have as much training as possible in rescue techniques, and river rescue courses were "an integral part" of New Zealand's rafting industry.
He considered it "unhelpful" the recent version of Mad Dog's safety plan had removed a requirement for guides to attend a swift-water rescue training course.
There was also "no excuse" for people in a white-water situation not to carry a throw bag with rope.
Mr Calder's opinions were contrary to those of former Mad Dog River Boarding operations manager Nicholas Kendrick, who had earlier told Judge Callaghan the company's position and his belief was that carrying a rope only created another potential entrapment hazard.
However, Mr Calder said throw bag ropes could not "self-deploy" and special knives should also be carried to cut tangled ropes.
He demonstrated in court a pulley-type system where the rope could have been attached to Ms Jordan's hand and then wound around a rock for leverage.
It doubled a person's pulling power, he said.
If that had not worked, a second leverage point could have been used, increasing the force to that of six people - the amount of people it eventually took pulling on a rope to recover Ms Jordan.
Mr Calder said, having listened to the evidence presented by Mr Kendrick and inspecting the site himself, it would have taken him "about two minutes" to attach a rope to Ms Jordan's hand and rig up a simple pulley-type system using other rocks.
From the evidence given by Mr Kendrick that at one point Ms Jordan had shifted slightly while pulling on her hand indicated she was entrapped by both the force of the water and the friction of her wetsuit on the rock surface.
Mr Kendrick said the rock, which had been identified in a "risk-hazard assessment" only four days before the incident as an "impact hazard" in low water-flow conditions, was now recognised as a possible entrapment hazard when it was visible above the water.
He said much of the time it was far under water and posed no threat but was now avoided when the Kawarau River was low.
One "undercut rock" deemed an entrapment hazard had been identified further down the river at that time, he said.
