The car a Ruakituri woman was in plunged 25 metres down a bank before ending up on its roof on top of boulders. Rescuers said she was lucky to have not been more seriously hurt.
The car a Ruakituri woman was in plunged 25 metres down a bank before ending up on its roof on top of boulders. Rescuers said she was lucky to have not been more seriously hurt.
When Tuai Senior Constable Tony Maultsaid got a knock on his front door at 8.30pm earlier this month he was not expecting to spend the next five hours in the middle of a rescue drama.
Maultsaid was on days off and was not on-call as his vehicle was in for repairs, but at the door was the sister of a Ruakituri woman who had failed to show up from her drive home from work several hours before.
Maultsaid did not hesitate. He sent the woman home in case her sister arrived there, then made a few phone calls.
When he had no success locating the missing woman, he decided to drive the route she had taken.
It was dark so he took it slowly, searching for any trace of her.
Twenty minutes out of Wairoa he noticed a very faint tyre mark, which he nearly drove past.
“I thought, ‘no, I better just check that out’. I walked to the edge and could hear someone yelling for help. I called out, saying I was here, and her response was, ‘it’s about time’.”
Fire and Emergency NZ crews from Tiniroto, Patutahi and Gisborne and St John ambulance staff responded to this car crash at Tuai - off-duty police officer Tony Maultsaid discovering it and ringing it in after a woman had come to his door looking for her missing sister.
Photo / supplied
Maultsaid called Fire and Emergency NZ and for a St John ambulance, then made his way down the 35-metre bank to the woman, who had suffered serious injuries and was trapped.
“Her leg was trapped under the vehicle, so her leg was injured, and she also had a badly injured shoulder, broken ribs and had taken a big knock to the head.”
He stayed with her until emergency services arrived – which took some time as they had to come from Gisborne – then assisted with the rescue.
Getting her back up to the road was not easy, as the team had to winch her up a vertical bank on a stretcher.
“It’s possible the woman had been trapped down the bank in her vehicle for up to five hours with some very serious injuries,” he said.
Eastern District deployment co-ordinator Senior Sergeant Steve Nicoll said without Maultsaid going above and beyond, the woman could have been trapped down the bank overnight.
“With temperatures dropping and the potential for shock to set in, this job could have had a very different outcome,” Nicoll said.
For Maultsaid, it’s simply what he does for his community, but he admitted he was happy to finally jump into bed around 1.30am, knowing the woman was on her way to hospital.
