Car drops 100m off steep cliff
"They did a fantastic job." Bryan King
There’s no cellphone reception and no fire brigade in the rural township where a car plunged 100m down an ‘‘extremely steep’’ hill.
Instead, Marokopa residents used a first aid kit and rushed to the local shop for an old-school emergency call.
The car carrying four people somehow managed to stay upright as it careened down a steep hill below Mangatoa Rd around 11.30am on the last day of 2017.
Marokopa is a small settlement on the coast north of Mo¯ kau and south of Ka¯ whia.
It takes the O¯ torohanga Volunteer Fire Brigade about 40 minutes to get a quick response ute to Marokopa so resident first responders stepped in, deputy chief Bryan King said.
‘‘By the time we got there, the locals had got all the people out of the car and up the bank,’’ King said.
‘‘They did a fantastic job. ‘‘We landed the [rescue] chopper, loaded [the patients] up, and there wasn’t a lot for us to do.’’
Three people were taken to hospital in moderate condition, a St John alert said.
A fourth person was uninjured King said that person escaped with bruises.
He was surprised they didn’t suffer more serious injuries.
The crash happened at the high point of the hill behind Marokopa, about a kilometre from the campground, King said.
The car itself was 80m to 100m down the bank, which he described as extremely steep.
He was amazed that the vehicle appeared to have stayed on its wheels.
Before emergency services arrived, locals and the resident responders used a stretcher to zigzag the four people up to a flat spot on the side of the bank.
They were tending to the patients with a first aid kit.
‘‘They were probably still about 100m down from the road,’’ King said.
Police also attended and are making enquiries into the circumstances of the crash, Senior Sergeant Jason McKay said. -