The operator of an adventure river trip in which a tourist from Worcestershire drowned had no specific safety regulations, a court in New Zealand heard today.
Emily Jordan, from Trimpley, died while riverboarding - riding a body board on fast-flowing rapids - after becoming trapped in the Kawarau River Gorge on New Zealand's South Island.
The company which ran the trip faces three charges of breaking health and safety laws. Today it emerged that the safety operation plan the company provided to police after the 21-year-old's death in April last year was substantially different to the original version.
Mad Dog River Boarding was bound by the terms of an application it was required to submit to the local council in order to obtain permission to use the river.
However, the company's former operations manager said it had later dropped one item - a direction for guides to have external water rescue training - in favour of an in-house programme, Radio New Zealand reported.
In his second day in the witness box at Queenstown District Court, Nicholas Kendrick said the business was operating with no specific governing regulations, as they had not yet been created.
The in-house training better reflected what the company was doing on the river, Mr Kendrick said, and other large omissions in the safety information presented to police were due to typing error.
Mr Kendrick had spent six seasons with Mad Dog River Boarding before Miss Jordan's death on April 29. He said he had navigated the Kawarau River about 2,000 times with 25,000 customers and there had never been a serious incident involving the rock under which Ms Jordan got trapped.
The first to reach Ms Jordan as she struggled to get free, Mr Kendrick said there was nothing rescuers could do to save her. She was trapped underwater for 20 minutes until another boat carrying ropes arrived and freed her.
Miss Jordan's boyfriend, Jonny Armour, who was forced to watch helplessly as her body was pulled from the water by rescuers, said she was a strong swimmer and that they had not been warned about the risk of getting trapped under rocks, or the chances of survival if this happened.
Speaking via videolink from Bournemouth, Mr Armour said he had been with Miss Jordan for 18 months and was taking a trip around New Zealand with her. He saw her hand above the surface of the water, but as the minutes ticked by he realised she must be dead, he said.
Prosecutor Brent Stanaway said the group had entered the water about 500 metres upstream of a power station called Roaring Meg and negotiated one set of rapids before experiencing trouble at a second.
The company should not have taken tourists down that stretch of river because water levels were unusually low and guides had not briefed participants on how to escape if they became trapped, Mr Stanaway said.
Anne Nichols, an American tourist on the trip, said the rock that Miss Jordan was trapped under was the size of a car.
Speaking via videolink from New York, she told the court: "I believe the guides were skilled at what they were doing, I just think the whole operation was too dangerous and we shouldn't have been in the water.
"After the first rapid I would have said that."
Black Sheep Adventures Ltd, which trades as Mad Dog River Boarding, and company director Brad McLeod both deny charges under New Zealand's Health and Safety in Employment Act.
The trial continues.
