Auckland Anniversary floods: Father of victim Daniel Miller finds comfort in diary

His physical presence is gone, but the feelings and observations preserved in Daniel Miller’s diary still bring comfort to the Auckland floods victim’s family a year on, his dad says.

Miller drowned in North Shore’s Wairau Valley while trying to help others as our biggest city was engulfed in record-breaking downpours on January 27 last year.

He thought about Daniel every day, dad Steve Miller told the Herald ahead of today’s anniversary.

“Oh God, there’s so many things [I remember], every day. Actually, when we went to his house and got some of his belongings, I got a diary - and sometimes I’ll flick through a couple of pages.

“It’s just a little comfort to see what he was up to, and what his thoughts were.”

Extended family had also benefited from the unexpected book of memories.

“He was quite close to my nephews, his cousins. So we’ve met up, and had a bit of a look through the diary.”

It didn’t feel like a year had passed since Daniel’s death.

“This has been the fastest year. It feels like yesterday, 100 per cent, that it happened.”

The dad-of-two’s ashes are buried at Park Island Cemetery in Napier, the city Daniel grew up in before moving to Auckland aged 19.

Family would gather at the cemetery today to again celebrate his life, as they had when the younger of Daniel’s two sons carried the box containing his father’s ashes to the cemetery, becoming distressed when he realised they were being buried.

“The younger one is autistic. He doesn’t say a lot. When we put the ashes on the ground he was trying to dig the ashes up.

“He was saying, ‘My dad’s box’. So that brought tears to a lot of people,” Miller said at the time.

Steve Miller, 58, watched the final moments of his son Daniel's life as the 34-year-old livestreamed himself wading through flood waters in Wairau Valley during the Auckland Anniversary weekend floods last year.

And he personally still struggled with the circumstances of Daniel’s death, which Miller says occurred when the 34-year-old stepped into a flood-concealed open drain - the manhole lid having come off - while walking down someone’s driveway, and all while livestreaming to a Facebook audience that included his dad.

In one of his final livestreams Daniel could be heard saying, “This is all bad ... something’s telling me to go up and check on the people in this house, so I’m going to.”

Those watching saw Daniel’s livestream suddenly become submerged in water, and his body was found in a culvert on Target Rd about 7.30pm that day, Miller said.

“[Where] he was found in the culvert, that’s where the drain [in that driveway] comes out.”

He wanted manholes in the city to be locked, or other safety measures put in place as the covers could come off and the danger be hidden if the water equalised - which he believed happened in Daniel’s accident, as there was no whirlpool visible on the livestream, Miller said.

“[Another death] may not happen for another 10 years, but I guarantee it’s gonna happen again. It’s a horrific way to go.”

And for anyone wanting to help during a disaster, it was best to “leave it to the pros”, the grieving dad said.

“Stay indoors and leave the rescues up to the people that have been trained.”

A manhole in Kaitāia is shown overflowing during flooding last August. Daniel Miller's family say he drowned after stepping into a flood-concealed drain in Auckland where the manhole lid had come off during last January's flood event. Photo / Roy Langford

Auckland Council manages more than 178,000 manholes as part of the city’s stormwater infrastructure, head of the council’s Healthy Waters Strategy Andrew Chin said.

“The council Development Code now requires all new manhole covers to have hinged lids and deep manholes to have a safety grille to prevent people falling into them.”

They’d install safety grilles under manhole lids on the existing network if the lids were displaced in floods or they were aware the lids could come off, Chin said.

“It’s important to note that the Anniversary Day flooding last year was so extreme, manhole lids came off in parts of the network we had not seen before, so we are developing tools to predict where the lids could come off in those type of extreme events.”

Four men died during the Auckland floods last year, clockwise from top left, Dave Young (in north Waikato), Daniel Newth, Dave Lennard and Daniel Miller.

A second young man - Daniel Newth - also drowned when he was swept into the Wairau Valley storm drains during last year’s deluge.

The 25-year-old Sunnybrook resident, described by his father Craig as an “adventurer, a professional arborist and an ardent surfer”, died while kayaking in the floodwaters.

In Remuera, father, grandfather and longtime Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT) volunteer Dave Lennard, 78, died when his Shore Rd home was hit by a landslip.

And in the rural north Waikato settlement of Onewhero, 58-year-old father, grandfather and former Pukekohe High School science teacher Dave Young was swept away in floodwaters, despite neighbours’ desperate attempts to save his life.

The deaths of all four men have been referred to the Coroner, but no reports have been made or inquest dates set at this stage.

The families of Newth, Lennard and Young either did not want to comment or couldn’t be reached before deadline ahead of today’s one-year anniversary.

Cherie Howie is an Auckland-based reporter who joined the Herald in 2011. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years and specialises in general news and features.