You were so close - according to reddit it was hosted on 12 year old SAN - the disk array died and they don’t have appropriate backups
I assume the details are in this paywalled article but I don’t have a sub - but the blurb you can see deems them unrecoverable.
Online casualties: NZ Defence Force websites now deemed unrecoverable
OMG if there's one thing most important in life for a SysAdmin it's ensuring you backup, backup the backups, and shift them quickly to secure off-site storage. 'Secure' to SysAdmin of course not only implies protection against theft, but to ensure if anything affects access to the building and/or IT systems such as fire, earthquake (esp. in NZ), man-made acts etc. By doing so you ensure you safeguard the option of being able to setup shop somewhere else and recover data.
They've done themselves untold reputational damage in my book alone. What is more concerning is what other critical data they've lost... it's almost a given it won't just be websites hosted on that disk array!
I digress, but here's a story! Many years ago working in a hosted datacentre (major name in IT in those days, somewhat less so now funnily enough!) when I was helping the boss put a panel back on the front of a 1 week old UPS (literally just after floor tiles had been cut to size, the unit having been commissioned 2-3 days before).
I had my end seated in and he went to slot his end back in when he somehow managed to pull my end out and across a 400v busbar that showered me in molten copper from a metre away. BANG!... datacentre completely dead except for the sound of alarms going off everywhere... under emergency lighting only! I had instinctively jumped back with a hell of a fright but was fine. I then saw the boss frozen to the spot holding the panel & I immediately thought he's 'live' so grabbed a piece of packing case timber to remove him from the source... I'm about to whack him with the wood when he looks at me an just says calmly... 'bugger that'll take some explaining', and stood up...he was fine! (wouldn't have been 5 seconds later after I had whacked him!)
Next we had engineers crashing their way into the datacentre & people going in all directions, and then the phones started... customers wondering why their IT systems had gone offline! Wow that was a fun day at work... we were up & running at 80% within 90 minutes. Learnt a lot that day!