Trapped woman just ‘one hour from death’

A freezing woman who spent 11 hours in her car as it lay metres from State Highway 41 in the central North Island would have died from hypothermia if she had been left there for another hour, her rescuers were told.

The woman, in her 40s, was pale and cold and started shaking as the carpenters from Max Mackenzie Builders ran to her aid and covered her in their jackets to warm her up.

The group of Taumarunui builders were on their way to a building site in Omori near Taupo yesterday morning when they spotted the Toyota Vivi from SH41 about 8am.

Site foreman Ricky Balloch said they pulled over to see what had happened to the crashed vehicle and had honestly expected to find a dead person.

As they wrestled through the toi tois to get to the car, which had rolled twice over a ditch, they yelled out to see if anyone was there.

The car had landed on the driver’s side and the front window was hanging off.

“We got close to the car and said, ‘Hello, is anyone there?’ and we heard this real faint ‘ Help me’.”

When they saw the woman, who was in her 40s, she still had her seatbelt on but her left arm, which was not jammed against the door, had been broken so she was unable to use it to free herself.

“She was freezing, we got our jackets out of the van and piled as much on as we could. And just kept her calm really and called for help.”

He said given how cold she was, she was extremely coherent and able to communicate very well.

Balloch said they called 111 and ran to the car to find whatever they could to warm her up. Temperatures fell to about - 4C on Sunday night as the woman sat and counted 26 cars drive past her in the dark.

“She was so grateful. She was unbelievably grateful. She couldn’t thank us enough.”

The men tried to comfort her and started unloading her car which was packed with kitset furniture she had been delivering to the Taumarunui Hospital, where she worked.

“She wasn’t shivering when we got there, but once we started warming her up with some coats it was like she was in shock. We got told later on today that she was only about an hour out of dying from hypothermia. She was severely hypothermic.”

The woman was flown to Waikato Hospital and was in a serious but stable condition last night.