Public Service Watch: Hospital staff looked to Stuff website as Kaitaki floundered

Tuesday, 8 August 2023

Cook Strait ferry the Kaitaki lost all power on January 28 and hospital staff were kept updated on social media and news website Stuff.

In the daily Public Service Watch column, The Post shines a light on how public money is spent, and the people and organisations making those decisions.

As the powerless Kaitaki drifted towards near-disaster, Wellington Hospital staff preparing for a mass casualty event turned to social media and Stuff.co.nz to find out what was going on.

Suffice to say, in bureaucratic-speak, many learnings came from the January 28 incident on the Cook Strait KiwiRail ferry.

We learned that Wellington’s two harbour tugs raced to the rescue but would have been almost powerless to help of the ship as the capital had got rid of tugs with open water salvage capability. The Government is now getting urgent advice to rectify the issue.

We learned that the part that blew in the cooling system was well-overdue for replacement. We learned that, just four months before the Cook Strait incident, a pipe in the cooling system on the Kaitaki blew under testing.

More recently, we learned, under the Official Information Act (OIA), that on August 24, 2022, Waka Kotahi land transport director Kane Patena, WorkSafe chief executive Phil Parkes, and Maritime NZ chief executive Kirstie Hewlett wrote to new KiwiRail boss Peter Reidy about concerns with “the current safety culture in KiwiRail”. They alleged that “commercial drivers are being prioritised at the expense of safety”.

Now, another OIA response, from Te Whatu Ora Health NZ, confirms things did not go perfectly at Wellington Hospital, which was on standby for a potential mass casualty event on January 28.

The captain and crew of Cook Strait ferry the Kaitaki took charge when the Interislander ship lost power in late-January. (Video first published February 5, 2023)

Debrief minutes after the incident highlighted issues that needed fixing, including the need for more training. It found that staff were reacting to news on Stuff.co.nz and social media on the night. And it found that escalation to the wider group was “problematic”.

Of course, it all became a little irrelevant. Out on Cook Strait, as powerful winds drove the powerless ship with 864 people on board towards the coast until anchors held, engineers managed to restart the ship and it limped to Wellington.

The hospital has a mass casualty plan, released under the OIA, that highlights shipping as one of the risks with ferries carrying up to 1600 people and cruise ships with up to 6000.

The result could mean a few casualties, such as the 11 who were injured and one dead when the Mikhail Lermontov foundered off the Marlborough Sounds in 1986, “or a much higher rate of both casualties and fatalities if the incident occurred suddenly in Cook Strait in poor conditions”.

“The figures resulting from the sinking of the Wahine may be considered to be in the mid range,” the plan notes.

Fifty-one people (and one more later) died on the Wahine when it hit rocks near the Wellington harbour heads in 1968. It had 734 crew and passengers on board.

The Kaitaki had 864 and the wind was gusting over 100kph on January 28.

Many things went well that night - not least having capable engineers on board - and the fatality number was zero.