Clearing the way in Kaikoura
Thousand-foot rock falls, hundreds of playful dolphins and working alongside Richie Mccaw are all in a day’s work for helicopter pilots clearing Kaikoura’s northern highway from earthquake debris. Karoline Tuckey reports.
Bernard Mcqueen spends his days hovering high in the air above Kaikoura. In one direction, his workplace provides an idyllic scene. Pods of dolphins frolic in the ocean, which stretches out to the horizon and sparkles on a fine day.
In the other, jagged pieces of the ocean floor rise from the sea, reaching out toward a broken landscape pitted with cracks, gouges and debris.
Mcqueen, 36, originally from Taihape, flies a Squirrel chopper among a fleet of 12 pilots working to knock unsafe debris from the giant slips covering State Highway 1, north of the seaside town of Kaikoura.
The road, and much of the surrounding landscape, was severely damaged in a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on November 14 and has been closed ever since.
Geologists guide the chopper team to strategically drop sea water from huge monsoon buckets on to the slips below, loosening landslide material and sluicing it away. It’s crucial work to help stabilise the area and make it safer for workers on the ground.
Kaikoura residents desperately need their road and rail links open, Mcqueen says, so the work has been full steam ahead since he began in January.
His only diversion was a week in February spent fighting the Port Hill fires in Christchurch.
The two assignments were ‘‘full on’’, he says.
‘‘There’s about 16 slips. I was blown away when I saw them, because those slips are just huge and they are so high. They go to about 1000 feet [300 metres] up from the sea.
‘‘It’s probably one of the biggest displacements of earth that New Zealand has seen. It’s just massive. It’s changed the whole landscape.’’
SH1 south of Kaikoura was less damaged, and reopened in the days before Christmas.
Transport Minister Simon Bridges has said the ‘‘very complex’’ repairs of the northern pass could cost $2 billion, and it is expected to reopen late 2017.
‘‘We undermine the big rocks and then they fall out,’’ Mcqueen says. ‘‘Sometimes they put five to six helicopters on a spot at once, so you can get a bit of water on it.
‘‘It’s quite awesome. There’s some big rocks that start shooting down the slopes and it’s like a river; it definitely works.’’
The helicopters have become a favourite curiosity for Kaikoura’s famous marine life. Whales are often seen in the distance, but the dolphins want a closer experience.
‘‘Every day we’re seeing a s...load of dolphins. They’re inquisitive, they love it.
‘‘You see them in big pods of about 200 way off when it’s a nice morning. Then they break off from their path and come jumping around your bucket and around you. You have to try and keep away from them.’’
Mcqueen’s supervisor is former All Blacks captain Richie Mccaw.
He knows how to run a team, Mcqueen says.
‘‘He’s my boss on this job, I talk to him every night, he’s bloody good. He makes sure you’ve got enough rest, and makes sure you’re happy.’’
On February 13, Mccaw, Mcqueen and another pilot from the Kaikoura team were near the end of their shift when they got an urgent call to help firefighters in Christchurch. They flew down straight away and arrived with just enough daylight to drop water for half an hour.
‘‘We could see all the smoke coming off the Port Hills when we got there, and there were so many people [about] because they were being evacuated from their houses, and had lost their houses. It was just such chaos.’’
They were up early the next day and filled the monsoon buckets anywhere they could find water, including swimming pools, to drench properties under threat.
‘‘I’ve done quite a bit of firefighting, but I’ve never been on a fire like that before, it was pretty insane. There was a lot of fuel there and it had been quite hot and dry. It was like what fires are like in Australia.’’
On February 14, Taranaki pilot Steve Askin was at work on the Port Hills fires when his helicopter crashed on the Sugarloaf Scenic Reserve hill. He did not survive.
‘‘It was horrible. But the fire was burning, so we wanted to get back into it ... we had to stay focused.
‘‘We carried on, but we were all thinking about what had gone on.’’
They stayed on the job until the danger of reignition was over.
During the fire, more than 2000 hectares burned, nine houses were destroyed, and about 1400 people evacuated.
At the chopper base, people brought baking to the workers, and Mccaw shook hands with children and fans.
In Kaikoura, geologists continue to regularly survey the slips and the highway sites.
The sluicing by the helicopter teams is making progress that can be seen from the air.
‘‘They [the slips] become like a solid cliff face, so it’s really effective at getting rid of that loose stuff. We don’t know how long it will go on for, but the excavators are starting to work on the slips.’’
Living in a community that has pulled together under incredibly difficult circumstances has been an amazing experience, he says.
‘‘We’ve had crays dropped off to us, they’ve brought us beers and dropped off a big cake. The locals are pretty cool.’’
Mcqueen has loved helicopters since he was a boy. While he was a teen at Taihape College, he worked as a shearer to pay for flying lessons.
He started training in fixed-wing aeroplanes at 15 years old, started training in a helicopter at 18, and has been flying commercially since 2002.
His most recent jobs before Kaikoura was with a mining company in Papua New Guinea, and flying hunters into remote locations in the South Island.
This year’s work helping stricken Kiwi communities stands out, he says. ‘‘It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster. I haven’t had a chance to sit back and think.’’
And the job’s not over yet. But when it is, who knows where the skies will take him?