Two dead, three hurt in helicopter crash
KAIKOURA: Ian Mehrtens spent his 69th birthday pulling dead and injured people from the wreckage of a helicopter crash across the road from his Kekerengu home — and there is one image that will stay with him forever.
He was one of the first to reach the crash site at the Kekerengu river mouth yesterday that killed two adults and badly injured three children.
The two people killed were believed to be the parents of the three seriously injured children, who were airlifted separately to Wellington Hospital.
‘‘The wee dolly . . . The little girl that was hurt, her doll was in the surf and I just picked it up,’’ Mr Mehrtens said.
‘‘I carried the wee girl up the beach to where her mum was lying.
‘‘She was asking me ‘Where’s my mummy? Is my mummy all right?’ and I said ‘Yeah she’s all right’, but she was far from it.’’
The Airbus EC120, which took off from Christchurch, crashed about 12.40pm yesterday.
Mr Mehrtens and other locals rushed to the scene and began hauling the victims out, worried the smoking wreckage would go up in flames at any moment.
He said the pilot was obviously dead and an adult woman was ‘‘not looking good’’.
The three children were pulled to safety, including a teenage girl with broken legs, and a boy.
Mr Mehrtens and his wife, Lyn, own a lodge opposite the beach where the crash happened — in front of the Kekerengu Store and camp, 30km north of Kaikoura.
They were standing in the kitchen with a friend watching the chopper land when suddenly something went terribly wrong.
‘‘It was just coming in to land and I thought he was putting on a display for the passengers, showing them how the helicopter worked,’’ Mr Mehrtens said.
‘‘It started spinning . . . then it just disappeared . . . clunk . . . bang. I thought, ‘S..t, oh my
God’ — it just nosedived down and I thought, ‘Crikey, they are going to need some help’.’’
He jumped on his quad bike and headed to the beach, meeting a neighbour and mate on his tractor.
The helicopter had gone down in the water so the men, helped by locals, campers and tourists, tied a rope to the tail and dragged it from the surf on to the beach.
Then they started frantically pulling people out.
They retrieved the pilot last, laying him on the beach and covering his face with a blanket — placing rocks around it so the coastal wind did not blow it away.
‘‘I didn’t want to see that,’’ Mr Mehrtens said.
‘‘The poor bugger . . . something must have gone really wrong.’’
He said the helicopter crumpled ‘‘like tissue’’ and his wife described it as being ‘‘like tinfoil’’.
‘‘It just all of a sudden altered course . . . there was a big crack and I thought maybe it landed on its runners and they were buggered, but no,’’ Mr Mehrtens recalled.
He said being part of a tragic rescue was not part of his birthday plan.
He worked as a first responder for years, pulling people from wrecked and burning cars, but never anything like this.
But do not call him a hero, he said.
‘‘Yeah, of course I would [do it again]. . . the old instinct took over and I just went.’’
Another witness said the crash was ‘‘awful, just terrible’’.
She said it happened ‘‘out of the blue’’.
‘‘One minute it was there, the next minute it was spinning . . . he wasn’t that high, he just couldn’t level out,’’ she said.
‘‘I thought he might have been spinning around to slow it down but then — bang.
‘‘Either something’s gone really wrong with that helicopter or there’s been something wrong with the pilot, a medical situation maybe.’’
The Transport Accident Investigation Commission has opened an inquiry into the accident.
❛ I thought he was putting on a display for the passengers, showing them how the helicopter worked