COWS STRANDED AFTER EARTHQUAKE RESCUED FROM HILL

CATTLE LEFT STRANDED AFTER NEW ZEALAND QUAKE

When the shaking stopped, only three cows remained. Minutes before, the Hereford cattle had been grazing on a postcard-worthy farm near Kaikoura on New Zealand’s South Island.

Now, the trio was stranded on a small outcrop surrounded by devastation. As helicopters surveyed the damage at first light Monday, the animals were spotted by a news helicopter.

Tuesday, the “Kaikoura cows” were reached by volunteers who trekked overland. Braving soft earth, collapsed roads, uneven ground and the risk of aftershocks, they rescued the cows the simplest way they could: using pickaxes and shovels to dig a “track” to freedom.

“They weren’t really happy about where they were, so that made it a bit easier to get them off,” one of the rescuers, Derrick Millton, told Newshub, the New Zealand news agency whose helicopter had first spotted the stranded cows.

The 7.8-magnitude earthquake also set off more than 100,000 landslides and killed two people.

The coastal settlement of Kaikoura is now at the epicentre of recovery efforts. With roads out of town blocked by landslides, its 2,000 people have been stranded.

But it was the plight of the cows that grabbed international attention.

An adult cow drinks 30 to 100 litres of water a day. After only a few hours, the stranded animals would have been severely dehydrated. By Wednesday, they would likely be near death.

But, with human lives still on the line, rescuing them was a low priority.

First responders in Kaikoura were “genuinely upset” they couldn’t save the cows. With no other help coming, the rescue was mounted by an impromptu team of volunteers.

Millton told Newshub “we dug a track with a number of people … we managed to get a track in and bring them out.”

Steep slopes would be no problem for sheep, New Zealand’s other ubiquitous farm animal, but cows are notoriously uncomfortable around steep terrain. Their inability to shift their weight backward means they have trouble descending steps without pitching forward.

Given the soft earth around their oasis of land, the three cows could have suffered fatal falls if they tried to escape on their own.

Freeing them was ultimately a matter of creating an earthen ramp and coaxing the animals to flat ground.

Milton praised the cows’ grace under fire.

“You’re a clever cow to be able to skip and dance while the land beneath you is disappearing down a hill,” he said.

NEWSHUB VIA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Three cows are stranded on an island of grass after Monday’s earthquake near Kaikoura, New Zealand. While rescue efforts focused on human lives that were still at risk, a team of volunteers dug a track for the cows to get to safety.