Community rallies round responders

A fire chief says he has been inundated by messages of support after the horror crash that killed seven people in Marlborough.

Picton Volunteer Fire Brigade chief fire officer Wayne Wytenburg was one of many emergency workers that responded to the crash involving a truck and van on State Highway 1, just south of Picton, on Sunday. He and his crew members had to cut open the vehicles to retrieve people.

Wytenburg said he received about 50 messages later that day from people in the community, thanking him for his work and sending their support, he said.

‘‘I had fire chiefs I hardly know messaging me, lots of wellwishes, it’s been exceptional . . . we’ve been absolutely inundated with messages,’’ he said.

‘‘The Facebook page had about 250 comments [on Sunday] night. I can’t respond to them all but we really appreciate them.’’

After a team debrief on Sunday afternoon, the following day Wytenburg turned off his phone and spent the day in rural Marlborough, ‘‘just to get away from it all’’, he said.

‘‘Sometimes you need to do that.’’

When he stopped at the Z Service Station on Blenheim’s Grove Rd, the manager there wouldn’t let him pay for his coffee, and a staffer restocking the shelves loaded him up with free cookies to take back to the brigade, he said.

‘‘And the Waitohi Bar and Grill . . . they offered to put on supper for us.

‘‘These sorts of events bring the community together, unite the community . . . The support has been fantastic.’’

Emergency workers recovering from the tragic scenes on Sunday were called to a second fatal crash in Marlborough just 30 hours later, when a van and a truck collided on State Highway 6 in Kaituna, about 18 kilometres northwest of Blenheim. The driver of the van died at the scene.

Marlborough Area Commander Inspector Simon Feltham said only a few police officers wound up attending both crashes.

That did not include the officer who was on her third day in the job when she was called to the crash near Picton, Feltham said.

‘‘She’s doing OK. Often people process these things over time, people get an adrenaline rush and concentrate on getting the job done, so it’s a matter of making sure they get the support of processing what they’ve been exposed to.’’

Police who attended the crashes would go to an internal debriefing, and there would be an inter-agency one to follow, he said.