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Searchers in New Zealand have found the body of a teenager who died on Tuesday as torrential rain fell during a school trip into caves in the Northland region.
The deluge swamped parts of the North Island, including Northland, where damage from record floods in February was still evident. In New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, inspections of 120 water-damaged buildings began on Wednesday morning as the weather cleared.
A search for the missing Whangārei boys’ high school year 11 student continued late into Tuesday night until the body was found, Police Supt Tony Hill said in a statement on Wednesday. The arrival of specialist equipment had allowed searchers to continue working after the police earlier said operations would be called off for the night.
The child was one of a group of 15 students and two teachers. The group had reported being in difficulty while undertaking an exercise in the Abbey caves – a short drive from the high school – on Tuesday morning, police said. All except one emerged safely.
The local council’s website advises visitors that the caves “can be prone to flash flooding”. Heavy rainfall warnings were in place for Whangārei from 9am on Tuesday morning and the national forecaster Metservice cautioned that the downpour “may cause streams and rivers to rise rapidly”.
There would be “a number of questions the public will have”, Hill said in Wednesday’s statement. But he urged people “to please not make assumptions as to what has occurred”.
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Karen Gilbert-Smith, principal of Whangārei boys’ high school, promised an investigation. An inquiry by New Zealand’s workplace safety inspectorate was also launched.
The storm swept down the island, pummelling regions badly hit by Cyclone Gabrielle in February with lightning, thunder and heavy rain, and generating a tornado that swept the roofs off two houses in South Taranaki.
Weather warnings were lifted on Tuesday night for Northland and Auckland, both of which bore the brunt of devastating floods in January and February that killed four people, rendered roads impassable, and badly damaged hundreds of buildings. The regions were battered again by Cyclone Gabrielle later that month, and by the beginning of May, Auckland had already recorded 90% of its average rainfall for the year.
Tuesday’s downpour totalled almost a full month of rain for the city and led to the closure of some schools and roads and the cancellation of train services. Travel had largely returned to normal on Wednesday, said Rachel Kelleher, an Auckland emergency management spokesperson.
Council inspectors had started to carry out safety checks on flooded buildings that members of the public had alerted them about, she said.
The Auckland floods and Cyclone Gabrielle – which killed 11 people and prompted a rare national state of emergency – were described as New Zealand’s biggest climate-related weather events on record by politicians and insurance companies. The catastrophes just weeks apart caused billions of dollars in damage and prompted questions for lawmakers about action on the climate crisis.
