Rescuers cut man from pasta machine

A kitchen worker at an inner-city restaurant had his arm trapped in a pasta-making machine for 90 minutes at lunchtime yesterday.

The drama happened in the kitchen of The Strand restaurant Volare.

The 24-year-old man was partially freed after fire crews dismantled the equipment.

St John district operations manager Jeremy Gooders said it was an ordeal to free the man.

"We responded to a male patient that had his left arm caught in a piece of commercial kitchen equipment. He sustained serious injuries. He was trapped for probably an hour and a half."

Mr Gooders said it appeared the man's arm was twisted and fractured.

"That's all we could see because of the machinery."

He believed the machine was used for mixing dough.

"We ended up taking the equipment apart, dismantling the machine and transporting him with his arm still caught in the relevant part of the equipment. I believe it was some sort of pasta-making machine," he said.

Tauranga chief fire officer Nigel Liddicoat said his crew and a Mount Maunganui crew had needed to dismantle the kitchen equipment or else the man could not be removed.

"His arm had been caught and twisted around the machine. It was an extremely difficult extraction. It was wedged in there, it wasn't coming out in a hurry," he said.

After the arm was mostly freed from the machine, fire crews had needed to travel to the hospital to cut off the remainder before medical staff could examine the injury.

The man was in a stable and comfortable condition at Tauranga Hospital and was expected to be moved into the orthopaedic ward.

A Department of Labour spokeswoman confirmed yesterday that they were investigating the incident.

"When there's a serious harm incident, we get notified. An inspector goes down, they'll be there pretty soon after," she said.