Teacher discharged from hospital as blast inquiry continues

The teacher hurt in a blast which ripped through an engineering classroom at Kaitaia College on Monday has been sent home from hospital.

Selwyn Subritzky was one of seven hurt in the blast which was heard all over the small Northland town of Kaitaia and which sent metal fragments and engineering tools flying through the air with lethal force.

Six of the 18 students in the class were hurt and four were taken to hospital in critical condition.

All but one have been removed from the critical list. The badly hurt student was still in Auckland Hospital where he was reported to be on a life support system.

College principal William Tailby said today one of the two students admitted to Whangarei Hospital had been moved into a ward from the critical care unit and the other was likely to follow today.

He said Occupational Safety and Health inspectors were not at the school yesterday but a gas expert was due from Wellington today to look for the cause of the explosion.

He said reports that the gas reticulation to the classroom may have caused it were speculation.

"They have eliminated the fact that a cylinder exploded," he said.

He said until the inquiry was finished it was also speculation that acetylene in welding bottles feeding the classroom had leaked and caused the explosion when a student used an angle grinder at the back of the class.

"We are talking about an engineering shop. These was acetylene down that end of the workshop. That is where the welding was done. So I guess it was someone's suggestion and I guess it is fairly likely given the nature of the explosion, that it was likely to have been acetylene."

Mr Tailby said the cause of the explosion may never be determined.

However, he said the school was reviewing its safety and operating procedures and did not know yet if it had done anything wrong.

"We will review all of our health and safety procedures and what we do. I don't know whether we fell short. That has yet to be determined," Mr Tailby said.

The uninjured students from the engineering classroom were not in class yesterday but spent most of the day talking with victim support counsellors and preparing cards and notes to their friends in hospital.

The rest of the school was back to normal, Mr Tailby said.

- NZPA