MAN HURT IN 1000FT FALL Car Lights Guide Rescue Helicopter

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31500, 14 October 1967, Page 14

MAN HURT IN 1000FT FALL Car Lights Guide Rescue Helicopter

(New Zealand Preet Association? BLENHEIM, October 13. A helicopter carrying an injured musterer was guided to a landing in the grounds of Wairau Hospital tonight by headlights from the parked cars of hospital visitors.

A young musterer, Kevin Ryan of Campden Station in the Upper Awatere Valley, fell 1000 feet this morning while working on a ridge of Mount Tapuaenuku.

He was top musterer herding sheep just below the snow line, about 5500 feet, when he slipped on a patch of frozen snow and tumbled down the rugged slope about 9 a.m.

Musterers working below Mr Ryan noticed his dogs were silent and went to investigate.

They found Mr Ryan about two hours later. He was unconscious with a broken collar bone, a broken thigh and wrist and extensively bruised and cut.

The nearest link with civilisation was 15 miles away at the Awapiri homestead of Mr G. M. Black. Soon after the police were telephoned a helicopter flew from Nelson, reaching the injured man about 5 p.m. The rugged terrain prevented the machine from

landing closer than a mile away from Mr Ryan. Even then the helicopter had to land on a razor-back ridge. The terrain was so rough that it took a party of four men more than three hours to carry Mr Ryan to the helicopter. Dangerous shingle fans, waterfalls and boulders made it impossible to carry him much more than 15 feet at a time without the rescuers taking a rest. The helicopter touched down at Wairau Hospital at 8 o’clock after a 35-mile flight from the scene of the accident.

Visitors to the hospital moved their cars from the parking area and then lit it with their headlights. A hospital spokesman tonight described Mr Ryan's condition as satisfactory.