Car careers off steep hill in South Taranaki - two injured, one critically

A woman is carried from a crash scene on Waitotara Valley Rd this morning after a vehicle she was travelling in crashed down a steep bank. Photo/Palmerston North Rescue Helicopter

A man walked bloodied and injured for up to 3km in the dark to find help after his car plunged 100m down a steep bank in South Taranaki, critically injuring his passenger.

Waverley fire chief Alan Hickford says even after the driver found help, he had no idea where the crash occurred and it was simply a case of firefighters using their nous and spotting any suspicious clues along the side of Waitotara Valley Rd that led them to finding his critically injured female friend.

Hickford said after the man walked about 3km, including past two houses he didn't see in the pitch black, he finally managed to call for help about 4.20am.

"Initially we didn't even know where it was. The driver, he managed to get out of [the car] and he walked all the way back to Waitotara which is 2 and-a-half, 3kms, away.

"Car's passed him and nobody picked him up, he was covered in blood and then he managed to raise someone at a house."

Fire crews initially thought he was the only one in the car - until he mentioned his female friend, understood to be a 22-year-old who was staying locally, that he couldn't find.

"He said 'I had a passenger with me and I can't find her' and then he couldn't tell us, because he's not from this area, where the vehicle was. All he could tell us was it was on the Waitotara River and he wasn't sure how far up, and was at least 3km and he said it was on the hill."

Emergency services carry the injured woman down the hill towards the Palmerston North Rescue Helicopter to be airlifted to Wellington Hospital. She is in a critical condition. Photo/PNRH

Parekama Hill is the first hill on the way up, so firefighters got out of the truck and began scouring the road side for any clues, with the help from the lights of their truck.

Fortunately they spied a couple of tyre marks within the first few minutes.

"You couldn't physically see it from the road ... it was just a couple of little wee tyre marks in the grass and if you weren't looking for it you would have missed it. We just started combing the side of the road for something that looked wrong, and we were lucky, we found it real quickly."

He was flabbergasted that the man was able to clamber back up the hill and choose the right way to go back towards Waitotara town, let alone walk carry on walking for a further half an hour for help.

"He had been knocked around pretty bloody bad, so how he got as far he did nobody knows.

"He'd gone past two houses but he can't have realised he'd walked past them. I don't even know how he found his way back up to the road to be honest.

"You get disorientated when things like that happen and he could have walked completely the wrong way. The nearest house going the other way is about 5km, 6km away."

He described the hill as being "very, very steep" and after finding the injured woman firefighters carried her about a further 100m to the waiting rescue chopper.

In the end, 20 firefighters - which also included crews from Patea and Whanganui -descended on the scene, along with police, St John Ambulance and the Palmerston North Rescue Helicopter.

"We had 20 firefighters there. Normally we battle these things on our own but today we were lucky."

The female passenger is in a critical condition.

Palmerston North Rescue Helicopter pilot Lance Burns said the area the crash occurred was more akin to a "steep bank rather than a cliff".

"I would call it a very steep bank rather than a cliff. The car came to rest about half way, or two thirds of the way down."

The chopper, which was called at 5am, landed safely in a paddock at the bottom of the hill.

After fire crews carried her to the chopper on a stretcher, she was airlifted to Wellington Hospital in a critical condition with head and spinal injuries.

The driver was taken by road to Wanganui Hospital for treatment. His condition is unknown.

Police are waiting for a tow truck to remove the vehicle from the scene.

The police Serious Crash Unit will investigate.