Survivor talks of helicopter crash

Time with his 5-year-old daughter this Christmas will have special significance for Turangi's Ross Martin.

The Department of Conservation staff member was one of five people to escape last week's helicopter crash on Mt Ruapehu.

While he's not a particularly reflective person, he has considered how his child may have been affected had he died.

"I definitely thought about how the crash would have impacted on her and how special it is now to be spending time with her," Mr Martin told the Daily Post.

But 15 years of DOC training and alpine risk management experience meant that in the final seconds before the crash Mr Martin was thinking about how to get out alive.

"I was purely focused on damage control.

"I'm involved with search and rescue and fire [fighting] and you develop a mental discipline just to focus on the risk at hand.

"As the helicopter was going down, I was in this kind of prioritised mode of work - what's happening? How do I extract the best out of the situation? - that kind of thing."

After regaining consciousness following the crash, Mr Martin was soon thinking about how to care for the injured and how to get help.

He was thrown through the helicopter's windscreeen by the impact and when he came to, he was on his hands and knees in the water, dazed and horribly winded.

Acidic water in his eyes meant he couldn't see but he could hear the sound of the helicopter's rotors winding down - and he knew he had survived.

Just before the crash he had been at the crater lake taking measurements with colleague George Taylor and they had requested a lift from a helicopter doing DOC weed-clearing nearby.

Mr Martin said the helicopter, containing five people, took off straight across the crater lake to gain enough height to clear the cliffs at the far end, which was normal practice.

But seconds after take-off, it became obvious the chopper wasn't going to make it.

"The pilot was starting to freak. About two-thirds of the way across he said 'somebody jump out please'.

"I was really worried we were going to belly-crash into the cliff.

"George and I were trying to jump out but we couldn't because we were both covered in alpine gear."

In hindsight, he said, anybody who had jumped would not have survived a 20m drop into an acidic lake.

With the cliffs straight ahead, pilot Bruce Lilburn banked hard left and ditched the helicopter at the lake edge, where Mr Martin and passenger Melissa Vedder were thrown through the windscreen before the helicopter rolled and came to rest.

After the initial shock there was damage to be assessed and injured people to tend to.

Mr Taylor and Ms Vedder both appeared to have significant head injuries - he was covered in blood and she was only weakly responsive.

The group pulled the seats and carpet out of the helicopter for the two worst injured and searched for a working cellphone or radio but found nothing.

Eventually Mr Taylor found a locater beacon and headed up a steep scree and snow-covered slope out of the crater to issue an alert.

When he did not return (he had carried on towards Whakapapa Skifield to raise the alarm), the others were concerned they might have to spend a night in the open in below-freezing temperatures.

The group found a radio unit and some functional batteries and Mr Martin headed up the slope, far enough to get a signal and contact the DOC duty officer at about the same time Mr Taylor was raising the alarm via a tramper's cellphone.

A helicopter and a rescue team arrived 20 minutes later.

Mr Martin was taken to Taumarunui Hospital where he spent the night with a badly bruised shoulder, minor concussion and a cut finger.

He returned to Turangi the next day and was back at work last week, not put off helicopters by the experience.

He praised the skill and dedication of the rescue volunteers and said Mr Lilburn's actions to avoid the cliff probably saved everybody's lives.

"I feel pretty lucky because certainly if the helicopter had slammed into the cliff we would have had some quite critical injuries.

"The flying of the pilot in the last 10 seconds was a work of art."