Tragedy triggers Cave Creek memories 

It has been many years since New Zealanders faced a disaster the magnitude of the river tragedy which claimed seven lives on Tuesday night.

For many people, the disaster brings back painful memories of the 1994 Cave Creek tragedy, when 14 people died while on a Polytechnic field trip to the West Coast.

One of the survivors of that tragedy, Steve Hannen, has been thinking of those who survived this latest tragedy and has reached out to the friends and family of those deceased.

"When I heard the news last night on the radio on my way home, my heart went out to them," says Hannen.

He doesn't know the survivors of the tragedy, but he knows their pain, as he too lost good friends and classmates 14 years ago.

"One of my best mates died, so it was pretty hard, there isn't any day goes by that you don't think about it," he says.

Hannen survived when 13 polytechnic students and a Department of Conservation worker died when the platform they were standing on collapsed.

"Obviously there's a lot of emotions going on to start with. It's pretty hard, your whole world is turned upside down, but as you go on and time progresses, it's important to have a positive attitude," he says.

At parliament, the Prime Minister led the condolences.

"I move a motion that this house recognises the deaths of six students and their teacher," said Helen Clark.

A climbing tour of the New Zealand's mountains in memory of Sir Edmund Hillary has been halted out of respect to the victims.

"He would feel tremendous sorrow that an activity that started in good faith has ended in tragedy," said Clark.

Nine years ago, Newsreader Kelly Swanson Roe lost her husband John to a similar canyoning tragedy while on holiday in Switzerland.

A flash flood swept down the river killing John, and twenty others in the group.

"John was my soul mate, I could talk to him about anything in the world," she says of her husband.

Hannen says his Christian beliefs gave him strength, and it is a Christian quality he urges the survivors from the school to remember in the days ahead.

"There's hope. There's light at the end of the tunnel," he says.