Medic recounts ‘miracle’ survival

When Fiona Nesbitt saw the car in front of her go flying off a 60-metre high cliff she was certain its occupants would be dead.

The Auckland medic was returning from Napier with her three children and their father when they saw the car careen off a remote section of State Highway 5 between Napier and Taupo on Sunday afternoon.

‘‘It’s something I’m not going to forget very easily. It happened very quickly, but also felt very slowly,’’ she said.

Nesbitt, who spends weekends as a medic at her daughters’ kickboxing competitions, remembers seeing the car slide to the left and hit the roadside kerb.

‘‘It looks like she’s tried to correct and the road’s been too slippery. We’ve just watched her veer straight across the opposite lane and literally straight off the edge of the cliff,’’ she said.

Nesbitt had seen the woman in the driver’s seat but did not know if there were others in the car.

‘‘I thought the lady was dead. I didn’t think she was going to survive that,’’ she said.

She stopped the car, did a U-turn and parked it at the top of the cliff. She and her daughters’ father ran to the cliff’s edge.

‘‘We couldn’t hear or see anything of the vehicle or anyone screaming. I was even more worried,’’ she said.

‘‘There was a bit of an overhang. We started yelling out to see if she would yell back, and told her help was on its way.’’

Five minutes later they heard the woman scream for help and the shrill sound of the car’s engine revving.

‘‘Then there was a lot of smoke, which we now know was from her tyres spinning against rock.’’

There was no cellphone reception so she had her daughters hail down cars and tell motorists to drive to a point where they could call emergency services.

A large truck arrived and a growing group of motorists who had stopped began tying strops onto the truck so someone could be lowered to the car.

An off-duty police officer and Nesbitt went down to the car.

The car had hit a large boulder sitting on a narrow ledge about 20 metres below the road.

‘‘If that boulder had not been there the car would have carried on falling,’’ Nesbitt said.

The woman was put in a stretcher and hoisted out and flown to Rotorua Hospital by the Greenlea Rescue Helicopter.

A hospital spokeswoman said the woman was in a stable condition.