'Tough' bush worker survives 10m plunge

Rescue workers treat Phillip Parr after yesterday's accident at Whangapoua on the Coromandel Peninsula. Photo / Westpac Helicopter

A forestry worker who fell more than 10 metres on to logs survived with two broken ankles and a black eye.

Rescuers and family of Phillip Parr, 25, were astounded he wasn't killed.

The accident happened yesterday morning while he was working for Ernslaw One at Whangapoua on the east coast of the Coromandel.

His workmates are trying to figure out how it happened. Adrian Havard said it appeared Mr Parr's hand had caught on a "sprag", a tiny piece of wire sticking out from a cable.

"And it's got hooked up in his leather glove that he's wearing and it picked him up 10 metres in the air and the glove slipped off his hand.

"I'm still waiting to talk to him to see exactly how it happened because it's pretty freakish ... The piece of wire that picked him up was probably not much thicker than, say, a match."

Mr Havard said Mr Parr was in the hauler crew doing a job known as "breaking out" - in essence, moving the rigging to hook logs up.

The Whitianga father - whose partner, Vicky, is just out of Thames Hospital after giving birth to their second child, Chev, six weeks prematurely - was last night in a ward at Auckland City Hospital in a "fair condition".

It is understood Mr Parr was halfway down the lines that support tree-felling machinery - trying to free them - when he got caught up himself. But he couldn't reach his radio.

"When he got caught, they obviously tensioned the wires and he got lifted up and then he managed to free himself and of course he dropped all the way back down," said Westpac rescue helicopter manager Greg Brownson.

Mr Parr was slipping in and out of consciousness when paramedics arrived, and was in a lot of pain.

Grandmother Coral Parr said he was "lucky he didn't die".

"One of the guys who takes him up there said he couldn't believe he survived," she told the Herald. "But he's a tough, nuggety little fellow."

Mrs Parr said Phillip's father had suffered serious injuries in a car crash at exactly the same age.

"So it's like deja vu, going through this again, but he's fine, he is alive and the body can mend ... His face, I gather, is pretty swollen ... so we're hoping he doesn't have head injuries."

Aunt Rosanne Smith said Mr Parr - who also has a 2-year-old son named Phoenix - was awake, coherent and talking. "It's pretty stressful but he's okay. He's a tough little guy."

Mr Parr is the latest person to cheat death falling from a great height.

A fortnight ago, a 63-year-old council contractor tumbled 40m down a sheer rock face at Mt Maunganui, suffering face, arm, leg and torso injuries.

Last month, a 15-year-old King's College student survived a 16-storey fall from a Manukau apartment block.