‘They are not going to suvive that’
In the lounge, Andre, 12, is playing a computer game. Yasmina, 15, is in her room. Dan and Andrea are talking on the couch. It’s a normal family scene on a bright winter’s Saturday afternoon at their Nelson home. The only sign of something out of place are the thin strips of physio tape on Andre’s legs. They are part of a much bigger, at times distressing story.
Latest figures show there were 3791 serious injury crashes on New Zealand roads in 2015. They do not get the same coverage as fatal accidents, but ripples from them spread out from the moment of impact and can last for years, disrupting lives in all sorts of ways.
For Andrea and Dan it has been a year of physical and mental trauma and desperate lows, but also of resilience, support, love and gratitude. Andrea was only metres away when she saw the head-on collision that changed her family’s life.
‘‘I saw the impact of the cars going up in the air and my brain to be honest said ‘they are not going to survive that’.’’
In the crumpled wreck ahead of her were her husband Dan and her then 11-year-old son Andre. The family were travelling back from Christchurch to Nelson on Anzac Day last year when the accident happened near Okaramio, northwest of Blenheim.
Dan and Andre were in Dan’s work car, a Holden Barina; Andrea and daughter Yasmina were following in the new family car they had bought that weekend.
Andrea recalls seeing a utility vehicle veering across the centre line before the shattering impact on a straight section of road. It may have clipped a car in front of Dan’s before ploughing into his small car almost head-on at close to 100km/h.
Somehow, Andrea managed to swerve around the mangled vehicles and stay on the road. Unopened bottles of beer that smashed on impact and freshly caught fish – the occupants of the other vehicle were returning from
It should have been a routine road trip home after a long weekend, but the impacts for one family will last a lifetime. Warren Gamble reports.
a trip in the Sounds – littered the road.
‘‘I said to Yasmina, just stay here, don’t look, don’t look, don’t get out of the car. Then I just ran to the car. I was not expecting to find them alive but they were both actually conscious.’’
The front of the Barina had compressed to the engine wall, the front seats were full of airbags, and it had auto locked. Someone grabbed a child’s metal scooter to smash the back window.
Andre was lying across the front passenger seat, struggling to breathe; Dan was trapped in the driver’s seat, his right leg ‘‘folded in half’’ at the thigh.
Others at the scene, pumped up with adrenalin, wanted to pull Dan out, fearing the car could burst into flames.
‘‘I remember being very frantic,’’ Andrea said. ‘‘ I said don’t touch my husband! Don’t move him! I was screaming like a mad banshee.’’
Andrea can’t explain her instinctive response, but it’s one that Dan and rescuers credit with saving his life.
‘‘It turned out he had a broken neck and huge internal injuries, and if they had moved him, he would have died,’’ Andrea says.
The next hour was a blur of action as firefighters worked to cut Dan free. As well as his broken right thigh, his right foot was crushed under the brake pedal, he had life threatening internal injuries caused by the seat belt, eight broken ribs, a fractured sternum, broken right knee and wrist.
His C7 spinal fracture carried a high risk of permanent paralysis even with the expertise of the rescuers.
He remained conscious throughout. He has no recollection of the pain but knew ‘‘a whole lot of stuff was wrong’’, and got distressed when he saw Andre.
His son had two broken arms, a broken pelvis and a traumatic brain injury that only became apparent in hospital.
‘‘I said it’s not your fault, there was nothing you could do,’’ Andrea told Dan, trying to calm him and stop him from trying to move.
When he was freed, the Nelson Marlborough Rescue Helicopter was in a nearby paddock waiting to fly him to Nelson.