A woman died and two other people were seriously injured when two cars collided on State Highway 12 near Waimamaku, between Omapere and Waipoua Forest, late on Tuesday morning.
Police said it appeared a Subaru Impreza stationwagon carrying a man and a woman had crossed the centre line and collided head-on with a Toyota Camry with one female occupant, on a sweeping bend in good driving conditions.
The Camry ended up in a ditch while the Impreza came to rest sideways across the highway. Firefighters from Omapere, Rawene and Kaikohe cut the woman from the wreckage of the Camry and the body of the female driver from the Impreza.
St John road crews stabilised the two survivors, who were airlifted to Whangarei Hospital by rescue helicopter with serious chest and abdominal injuries.
The driver of the Camry was understood to live 200 metres from the crash scene. The occupants of the Impreza were understood to be Northlanders, possibly from Whangarei.
With no detour possible, the highway was closed for more than three hours as emergency workers and an investigator from the Whangarei-based police Serious Crash Unit did their jobs. Senior Constable Jim Hawthorn said it was too early to say why the Impreza had been on the wrong side of the road. The weather was good, the road was in good condition and nicely cambered and there were no obvious mechanical faults in either vehicle.
The scene was blessed by a kaumatua from Waimamaku before the woman's body was removed about 2pm and the road was cleared. Traffic began moving again about 2.30pm.
Fire Service volunteer support officer Colin Kitchen praised the work of the rescuers, saying dealing with high-impact crashes was "pretty stressful" for volunteer firefighters.
A critical incident stress management team would talk to the firefighters involved, and the local people who were first on the scene and knew at least one of the injured.
The crash, the second road fatality in the Far North in three days (following the death of a teenage cyclist who crashed into a milk tanker trailer in Moerewa on Sunday), took the region's toll for the year so far to 12, five more than last year's record low toll of seven.
What goes upWhat went up inevitably came down in a bizarre single-car crash on State Highway 12, just west of Kaikohe, on Saturday afternoon.
The driver, described by police as a a paraplegic, was heading west when he apparently lost control on a sharp corner just past the Mataraua Road intersection, the vehicle flying over (or possibly through) a tall hedge and landing in a paddock, coming to a halt when it crashed into a log.
The driver was assisted out of the vehicle by emergency personnel. He had one passenger, an elderly woman believed to be his aunt.
The crash was witnessed by a driver heading in the opposite direction, fortunately perhaps given that the car landed out of sight of the road.