Helicopter footage shows the devastation of the head-on crash that killed eight in April 2019. Video / NZ Herald
Just five more minutes of normality.
For a police officer, the most difficult part of the job is telling a family their loved one won't be coming home - to break that normality and shatter their world.
National road policing manager Superintendent Steve Greally distinctly remembers pulling up to someone'shome with his partner and spotting them through the window of their home from the street.
"[I thought], my God, I want to give them five more minutes of normality if I can, just five more minutes of thinking everything is going to be okay," he said. "You're going to absolutely change their lives and it is not easy.
"It is traumatic and that's what affects our cops. It's one of the hardest things to deal with is how that plays on your mind.
"How do you go to someone's place and tell them that their husband, their wife or their kid is not coming home. How do you do that? It's horrific."
Superintendent Steve Greally, national road policing manager. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Greally was speaking after a horror two-car smash between an SUV and a van on State Highway 1, near Ohakuri Rd, Atiamuri, yesterday morning which left eight people dead and a 9-year-old boy fighting for his life.
The crash took place less than 20 minutes away from where five family members died on April 1 after they crashed into a tree on Tirohanga Rd.
An 11-year-old was the only person to survive that crash, which killed three sisters and two men.
The police officers who attended yesterday morning's crash were the same officers who attended the crash on April 1.
That's the harsh reality for frontline police officers, Greally said.
"To join police is a vocation, it's work you want to do to help people knowing full well these sorts of things happen, unfortunately far too often," he said.
"There's every chance as a police officer you will be going to one of these horrific things which is something that we do prepare for."
The trauma experienced at the scene of any crime or any incident doesn't always leave officers when they step back into their cars and head away either.
Eight people died and a boy was critically injured in this head-on crash on State Highway 1 near Ohakuri Rd, Atiamuri, yesterday. Photo / Ben Fraser
"These crash scenes are particularly difficult for all people attending them, not just police but also other emergency services, including fire and ambulance. As you can imagine, some of the are at high speed, involve the human body which doesn't put up with much impact unfortunately, so you can imagine the scenes are particularly horrific at times."
But it isn't just the gruesome part that gets to people, he said.
"It's more than just the physical stuff, it's what plays on people's minds when you turn up and there's only a limited amount of things you can do to alleviate someone's pain," Greally said.
"So it's not always about the fatal crash, it's also about those which have serious injuries, people who have life-altering injuries for the rest of their lives, you can imagine that's particularly hard to deal with as well."
This April has been the deadliest April on New Zealand's roads in 10 years, according to the Ministry of Transport, with 45 people killed this month alone. It brings the road toll to 137 - eight more than at the same time last year.
Greally said it was "profoundly gutting" that crashes like this continue to occur despite efforts to reduce the road toll.
"I'm lucky I don't have a family member or close friend who's been through this, but I know a lot of people who have," he said.
"When you interact with these people you understand exactly the grief. But even then it's very, very hard to recognise exactly what they're going through unless you've done it yourself, and I just hope most people don't ever have to go through that amount of trauma. It's particularly gruesome."
