Garth George: Pain and loss mar dawn of new year

Grey District mayor Tony Kokshoorn offers support to a distraught family member of the 29 miners trapped in the Pike River coal mine. Photo / Mark Mitchell

At midnight tomorrow the clock will bring to an end what in a sense has been an eminently forgettable year. Too many things have happened that most of us would rather put out of mind.

But that won't happen. In fact, 2010 will live on in the memories of many New Zealanders for decades to come. It is a year that will be indelibly inscribed on the memory of a nation, more heavily for some than for others, as a time of deep and abiding personal loss both of people and property.

Particularly this is so of the Pike River coal mine disaster on Friday, November 19, which claimed the lives of 29 men - husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, cousins, uncles, nephews - all of whom will be remembered and missed for lifetimes by their families and their tight-knit communities.

Their anguish will go with them into the new year, for the bodies of the 29 remain entombed and may never be recovered. Then there will be a number of seemingly interminable investigations, inquests and a full-fledged royal commission of inquiry, which will keep the wounds open and bleeding for most of next year.

But the real tragedy is that in the 21st century the explosions should never have happened. The coal seam being mined is the same one in which gas explosions killed 65 men at nearby Brunner in 1896, the worst mining disaster in our history.

One would think that in the following 114 years technology would have advanced to the stage where dangerous gas build-ups in a coal mine would be a thing of the past. That, however, has been shown to be wishful thinking.

The other disaster that won't be forgotten for generations is the magnitude 7.1 earthquake which hit Canterbury in the early hours of Saturday, September 4, demolishing billions of dollars worth of homes, businesses and factories.

Fortunately, it will be remembered, too, for the fact that not one life was lost on that day, nor in the endless swarms of aftershocks, one of the latest of which, on Boxing Day, brought more damage.

Those whose homes and businesses were damaged heavily will carry their loss into the new year as well. Some homeowners, in fact, will continue to suffer the effects for years to come. Some of them, according to reports, won't have their homes restored or rebuilt until sometime in 2013.

That is utterly deplorable and for the life of me I cannot see why such imperative work cannot be completed a hell of a lot sooner than that. Whoever is to blame for this situation needs to be held to account quickly.

As I have said before, the only thing that will change at midnight tomorrow night is that the calendar will move from 31/12/2010 to 01/01/11. New Year resolutions notwithstanding, we will all carry into next year the problems we have right now.

The economy will continue to stumble along. Presumably the Government is doing its best to make it better, although you wouldn't know considering the attention it gets in the media.

Politicians have long forgotten one of life's abiding tenets - always put principles before personalities - and so, in these competitive times, have the media. While we are titillated by dirt-diggers and their victims, political traitors and the threats of parliamentary has-beens, we are all paying through the nose for food, motor fuel and other essentials, including state services.

The poverty stricken of today will still be that way as the new year unfolds; children - those who survive the abortion industry - will continue to suffer horrific abuse from parents and caregivers; cruelty will continue to be visited on far too many innocent animals; disrespect for the police will bring further assaults on officers; the road toll will stay pretty much the same and the unacceptable highway hold-ups in and out of Auckland will still mar every holiday weekend.

I laughed like a drain when I first saw a picture of the tunnels on the new toll road north, because I learned in my first year of primary school that two into one won't go.

The question I hear often is: "How could God let this happen?" And I am reminded of the answer to exactly those questions given by Billy Graham's daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, to a television interviewer in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

She said: "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman he is, I believe he has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us his blessing and his protection if we demand he leave us alone?"

There's something to think about as the new year dawns.

garth.george@hotmail.com