Police name children who died when van plunged into river

Police have named the three children who died when a van plunged into the Awakino River in North Taranaki on Christmas Day.

They were six-year-old twins Amanda and Cindy Su, and their five-year-old sister Sarah from Pukehoke.

The bodies were retrieved after a crane pulled the family's van out of the river at around 9-10pm last night, Acting Sergeant Chris Allen of New Plymouth Police told NZPA.

Two adults and the two eldest children - aged 13 and 11 - were able to get out of the vehicle and reach the bank after the accident, which happened at Awakino on State Highway 3, about two kilometres south of the Awakino Tunnel at 11.30am.

Once ashore, they managed to clamber to the roadside and raise the alarm with a passing motorist.

Emergency services from Te Kuiti and Taranaki took the four to Taranaki Base Hospital, while firefighters and rescue helicopter crew tried in vain to reach the submerged vehicle.

Publican Craig Morrison, a local fire-brigade member who was at the crash scene, told NZPA that the van failed to negotiate a corner and plunged around seven metres into the river below.

"There's a little bit of scrub on the bank, no major trees... It just went straight off the edge," he said.

The van sat "around ten feet out, and ten foot under the surface" of the river, where rescuers had managed to secure it but couldn't lift it up the bank.

Rescue operations - which included an ambulance, a rescue helicopter, police and three fire engines - were hampered by the river being in full flow due to three days of rain and because the area didn't have cellphone coverage, said Mr Morrison.

- NZPA