East Coast truckies to the rescue
LIKE MANY TRUCKIES WORKING ON THE EAST COAST, WILLIAM Houkamau has come across many crashes on the narrow and windy State Highway 35. In 21 years of driving logtrucks on the Coast he’s even once been first on the scene after a mate crashed his car and was trapped in it. William got him out: “Thankfully,” he adds, “it wasn’t lifethreatening.”
Incidents on the picturesque but dangerous Pacific Coast Highway are so frequent that in just two months late last year, for example, he and his fellow-drivers at Rangitukia-based Rewi Haulage alone were the first on the scene of three crashes.
A “very proud” Hoana Rewi, the company’s health & safety manager, says they administered first-aid, alerted emergency services and assisted medical staff.
And, she stresses, their actions were typical of East Coast truckies – across the industry…and that’s something that needs to be made public.
When Rewi Haulage driver Beau Hailey came across a rollover, “it was the first time he’d had to use his first-aid kit.”
Matri Kururangi and Pauly Hale were first to arrive at a 4WD rollover, helped get the occupants out of the vehicle and moved it off the road.
And William and fellow-drivers DJ Fox, Nui Lawson and Claude Waitoa were the first arrivals at a vehicle rollover in which five teenagers had been injured. Together they tended to the injured, alerted authorities, commenced traffic control and assisted medical staff when they arrived.
Says Hoana: “Will, being a first responder and fire warden, knew exactly how to handle the accident.”
That’s right: William’s good work on SH35 goes beyond helping those he chances on while at the wheel of his logtruck – he’s also been a volunteer fireman in hometown Te Araroa for 26 years.
And that means he’s also attended many, many more motor vehicle accidents on callouts.
Sadly, that has included serious injury accidents…and fatalities.
Worst of all, as William says, “was just recently, where a few people got killed at home here. I hadn’t started my shift and I had to jump on the fire truck with the team….and we knew the people.
“That was the hardest thing for me. They had 14 and 16-year-old kids.
“It was pretty harsh. The chief and I went in and we were pretty teary. Nothing prepares you for that: When there’s people that you know involved it hits you harder.”
Hoana Rewi says that being the first on the scene at serious accidents has an emotional impact on drivers that also needs to be acknowledged. Quite often they need “some time off work, because it can be quite traumatic.”
William says he’s lucky that Rewi Haulage owners Chubb and
Agnes Rewi are very supportive of his role in the Te Araroa Volunteer Fire Brigade – even if it means him sometimes starting work late: “They told me ‘don’t hesitate – go to your fire callout first and worry about your work after.’ ”
Fortunately, a lot of the incidents and accidents he’s encountered while at the wheel of his truck (which currently is a 2019 Western
Star 4864) have been much less serious – although he has had to rescue people from their crashed vehicles on his own.
On many occasions it’s just a matter of using the chains and other gear on the truck to get a vehicle back on the road….or to drag fallen trees or branches off the highway: “We’re lucky – we’ve got gear on our trucks that we can use to help out.”
Hoana Rewi says William is “well-known for being the most courteous driver on the roads.”
And that’s something, he says, that he learnt as a young bloke: “For me I was lucky growing up when most of the drivers stopped (if they saw anyone stopped on the road or that a car had crashed). Didn’t matter what – just to see.”
These days, “people see a vehicle and they seem to think ‘ah that’s alright.’ They don’t check it.
“But to me, it’s better to check….because you never know what’s there. There might be somebody that’s hurt and needs help.”
And it’s this message that he’s keen to share with other drivers: “Five minutes of your time is not going to make any difference in getting from A to B. I’d rather just stop and check and make sure: At the end of the day you may be able to save someone.”
William has been driving logtrucks for 21 years now – the last five of them with Rewi Haulage.
State Highway 35 – which winds its way from Opotiki to Gisborne, around East Cape – has increasingly been his most regular route, as he carts logs to Gisborne.
It is, as he says, “not the best of roads” – not only windy but “quite narrow. For instance, about five or six years ago a mate of mine was driving a metal truck and I met him going the other way on a narrow strip on 35.
“It was pouring with rain and although we were both on our own side of the road, our mirrors smashed.”
There are a number of places like that, William says, where two trucks meeting can be downright dangerous. It’s fortunate, he adds, that he and other local truckies know the road so well that they can avoid potential incidents with defensive driving – making allowances for other road users.
“We’ve driven on these roads for many years and we pretty much know them inside and out, but other people that come here don’t. If you don’t know the road it gets tricky sometimes.”