Highway rebuild was dangerous enterprise
Near misses with helicopter tail rotors and reckless drivers breaking through cordons were some of the safety risks faced by workers repairing the earthquakedamaged highway north of Kaiko¯ ura.
More than 4000 safety reports were created from when workers started repairing State Highway 1 until the road reopened north of the coastal town last December, though most were records of safety meetings.
Almost 800 safety reports were generated in November alone – nearly one for every two employees working on the rebuild.
Documents obtained under the Official Information Act show there were 263 critical risk incidents reported between when the magnitude-7.1 earthquake struck on November 14, 2016, and when the highway reopened on December 15, 2017. The worst month was August, when 57 such incidents were reported.
Critical risk incidents are defined as those that could cause serious harm if they remained uncontrolled.
The rebuild work was undertaken by the North Canterbury Transport Infrastructure Alliance (NCTIR), made up of the NZ Transport Agency, KiwiRail and several construction companies.
Helicopters caused some of the more noteworthy near misses.
One worker nearly walked into the tail rotor of a helicopter on June 23. He had been working in Clarence for a fortnight and was catching a ride back to Kaiko¯ ura when the pilot asked him to change seats to better balance the chopper. He got away with singed hair from the aircraft’s exhaust.
On June 10, a helicopter carrying a drill rig to a slip face lost its load over the sea due to a failure of the load hook’s mechanical release control.
On May 19, an abseiler fractured and dislocated his ankle when a rock he had earlier tried to move rolled on to him. He was experienced with rope work as an arborist but did not have experience working to make cliffs safe from loose rock.
He was taken to Kaiko¯ ura Hospital within 25 minutes. An investigation found a supervisor should have been working above the abseilers but none was there when the incident happened.
Many of the critical risk incidents – 103 of the 263 recorded – were caused by near-misses with people and vehicles or machinery.
In one case, a change to traffic flows forced a large dump truck to make a three-point turn. On the last turn, the truck hit the hut of a traffic controller, who jumped clear just before the impact.
In another incident, a supervisor reversed a vehicle into a shed with two people inside, leaving one with ligament damage. The driver fled to avoid a drug and alcohol test. He was later charged by police in Christchurch.
The report said media coverage of the incident was ‘‘much worse than the actual outcome’’.
It was not only workers who caused health and safety headaches during the highway rebuild.
In August, after media announced a construction track had been built around the largest slip at O¯ hau Point, a member of the public breached the cordons and drove north through the closed construction zone in their four-wheel-drive. Workers tried to stop them by using a digger to block the road but the driver got around it and kept going. The incident was reported to police.
In the same month, a school camp chose to walk through a railway tunnel near Goose Bay, south of Kaiko¯ ura, despite the fact trains were using the line again. The parent involved was spoken to by officials.
An NZTA spokeswoman said the rebuild was made more complex by the terrain, with cliffs on one side of the highway and the ocean on the other.
The worksites were extremely congested, which contributed to the high number of incidents involving vehicles and people, she said.
Workers went through an intensified induction and training programme to minimise risks, and the organisation ran a campaign about critical risks and lifesaving rules. The health and safety record for the work was ‘‘in line with industry standards’’, the spokeswoman said.
WorkSafe southern chief inspector assessments Darren Handforth said health and safety was a primary focus for NCTIR, which completed the rebuild ‘‘in difficult weather and under tight timeframes’’.
‘‘The health and safety record for the work is a tribute to everyone involved.’’