Hurt woman trapped in car 24 hours

Press, 5 March 1984, Page 9

Hurt woman trapped in car 24 hours

PA Auckland An injured woman who spent 24 hours trapped in her car which plunged 60m down a steep bushclad slope was rescued on Saturday after a ranger noticed a broken barrier on a lonely road to Huia Beach.

Mrs Judith Bradley, aged 46, of Papatoetoe, said she had been driving to Huia Beach on Friday to collect driftwood when her car left the road and landed 60m down a steep slope. She said that for 24 hours she had only birds for company as she sat trapped in her car with a broken hip, cuts, bruises, anrf broken teeth.

Mrs Bradley was reported in a satisfactory condition in Auckland Hospital last night She said she lost consciousness several times as she spent Friday night wrapped in her sheepskin car seat cover.

Her car, although wedged between two trees, was in danger of plumeting another 50m to the bottom of the slope. ‘7 was saying lots of prayers, and I was banging on the roof of the car with the windscreen wiper hoping that someone would hear me. I was thinking that I could have done with a whistle,” she said.

At midday on Saturday an Auckland Regional Authority ranger, Mr Barry Green, of Huia, drove past the point where her car left the road.

He went to the broken barrier and heard cries for help. Senior-Sergeant W. H. Raynes, at Henderson, said, “If she had fallen further down the cliff nobody would have been able to hear her cries. As it was, the car could not be seen from the road. She could have been there for years.”