Erebus families want memorial
Many families of the Mt Erebus victims want a memorial ready for the 40th anniversary in 2019, an advocacy group says.
Next week – Tuesday, November 28 – will mark the 38th anniversary of the crash, that saw 257 people die on board an Air New Zealand scenic flight to Antarctica.
The DC10 jet they were on board ploughed into Mt Erebus on November 28, 1979 – it is still the Southern Hemisphere’s worst aviation accident.
Small memorials have been set up in towns and homes as well as at Scott Base itself, but there is no national memorial to remember every life lost on Mt Erebus.
The group has been working with the Ministry for Culture and Heritage for some years, but they say movement has been very slow.
David Allan, who lost both his parents and a teenage sister in the accident, is frustrated by the lack of tangible progress. ‘‘The excuses and the procrastination are extremely frustrating. We have been ignored, resulting in a lack of any tangible progress over much of this year,’’ said Allan, who acts as a spokesman for the Erebus families.
‘‘It is embarrassing for the Erebus families and the procrastination can only be described as appalling.’’
The group ask for it to be a special place for the families affected by the tragedy, and for all New Zealanders, to remember the accident.
Considering the magnitude of the Mt Erebus accident, with 257 fatalities, the number of close family is in the hundreds. With grandchildren and wider family and friends, thousands of New Zealanders, and others from overseas have direct links to the accident.
Spokesman for the group Dr Richard Waugh adds: ‘‘Our advisory group is in touch with many Erebus families including surviving spouses, siblings and other close family, many of whom are now in their 70s and 80s. They are impatient for an official national memorial to the air accident. Did the Government tell the Pike River families and the families of those who died in the Canterbury earthquakes to wait 30 or 40 years before any memorial? Of course not.’’
It is now appropriate for the new Government to help the Erebus families in their ongoing grief, and to create an elegant and attractive place where all 257 names can be honoured, and where New Zealand as a nation can remember our worst civil disaster, he said.
Fifty eight of the passengers came from overseas: Australia (2), Canada (2), France (1), Japan (24), Switzerland (2), United Kingdom (5) and the United States (22).