Family rescued from vehicle stranded in flooded river
Published: September 5, 2003
A man, a baby and two young children were rescued from the roof of an almost-submerged vehicle in a flooded river near Waipukurau tonight.
The alarm was raised about 5.15pm after a woman who had also been in the vehicle went for help. The vehicle had become stranded when the driver had attempted to ford the Tukituki River, about 1km east of Waipukurau’s refuse transfer station.
The Waipukurau Volunteer Fire Brigade had just returned to their station after attending a three-car crash on the Takapau Plains, found the vehicle about 100 metres from where the woman had reported it stranded.
It was almost completely submerged with the man and the three children on the roof, said senior officer and brigade deputy chief Owen Spotswood.
“We just said to one of our guys, you’re the smallest, you do it,” he said.
A ladder was slung out between a tree branch and the roof of the vehicle. Fireman Peter Keenan crawled out over about five metres of the swollen river to carry a child in nappies to safety.
A second child, a boy aged “about four or five,” held Mr Keenan’s hand as he was led across the ladder, and the man, secured with a rope, put the young baby inside his jersey as the two made their way to safety.
The Lowe Corporation Rescue Helicopter, based almost 50km away in Hastings, was barely in the air before the rescue was over.
Mr Keenan said that as he crawled across the ladder, he could feel the stricken vehicle moving. It was left in the river overnight.
Just after the rescue the brigade was called to two flooded houses near Central Hawke’s Bay College, also on the eastern side of Waipukurau.
Mr Spotswood said families were evacuated from both homes as a stream rose to flood the properties in the worst flooding he had seen in that part of the town. Residents in at least three other houses in the immediate area were warned about the flooding.
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