The honours system has got it wrong again. If the heroism of all the people caught up in the terrible events at Tamahere are not acknowledged soon, it will be a complete travesty.

National recognition for firefighters and members of the public who risked their lives during the April 2008 Tamahere coolstore explosion are almost certainly on the way – but details are not yet being made public.

Phil Goff has criticised a second veto keeping him from visiting Hamilton Fire Station and the men who battled the fatal Tamahere coolstore fire, as “unbelievably small-minded”.

It is one year since the explosion at Waikato’s Icepak Coolstore, which killed one firefighter and left seven others badly injured. The scars are far from healed for the firemen and the community – and there are still many unanswered questions.

A planned visit by Opposition leader Phil Goff to the Hamilton Fire Station has been blocked in a political stoush over which party gets to meet those injured in the Tamahere explosion first.

HyChill, the Australian company whose flammable hydrocarbon gas was used at Icepak Coolstores, Tamahere, has been moved to defend its product – even in an obscure online chatroom.

September’s Fire Service report into the Icepak explosion and fire was one of the last chapters in the “Tamahere story”, according to the organisation’s magazine Fire & Rescue.

The Icepak coolstore blast and fire is high on the agenda of the NZ Cold Storage Association annual conference in Wellington this week.

Icepak has given notice that it intends restoring refrigeration operations at the Tamahere coolstore that survived the explosion and inferno that razed 90% of the site in April.

For Sale signs were up at the killer Hamilton coolstore site today, with owner Icepak saying the community no longer wanted it.