Two men dead after concrete trucks plunge into harbour

Two Blenheim men died today when the concrete trucks they were in fell from a barge and plunged into Picton Harbour in the dark just before 6.30am.

Rescue dive teams recovered the bodies and they were taken to Blenheim's Wairau Hospital for formal identification. A specialist dive squad from Wellington will investigate later today.

Dave Baker of Marlborough Coastguard said emergency services were confronted with a difficult scene during the rescue attempt as windows on the trucks had been down at the time.

"For those situations you need to be right on the spot when it happens to be successful. Unfortunately the windows were down. If the trucks had been sealed we might have been luckier."

Mr Baker said both trucks, which were full of cement, were lying on their sides in the water.

Senior constable Russell Smith, of Blenheim police, said the families of the two men had been notified this morning, but police were awaiting formal identification before releasing their names.

The two trucks belonged to Firth Industries and were being loaded on to a barge operated by McManaway Marine. Neither company would comment on the accident today.

Mr Smith said the two trucks were being loaded on to a barge at a commercial dock on Lagoon Dr, northwest of the Picton ferry terminals, at 6.15am when they suddenly "ended up in the water".

A boom was later erected around the scene to contain any diesel spilt from the trucks and police were waiting to carry out investigations before removing them.

Mr Smith said it was not known what caused the trucks to fall off the barge.

"It's a fairly common scenario in terms of trucks being taken out to the (Marlborough) Sounds for building projects on barges, but this kind of accident is certainly unusual."

There is usually no problem associated with the operation but people in the industry say care has to be taken about weight distribution on the barges.

If the weight distribution is not correct a barge could tip, causing objects to fall off.

Police were to interview witnesses to get a clear picture of what happened.

Deputy harbourmaster Dave Hoskins said the ready mix concrete on board the two trucks posed no environmental threat.

"It will be solid concrete by now unfortunately," he said.

Mr Hoskins said the Cook Strait ferries had been told to cut their speed as they traversed the harbour.

"They will just be taking it a bit quieter than usual to cut down on wash. But ferry operations won't be disturbed at all, it is well off to the side."

Maritime New Zealand spokesperson Heidi Brook said an investigation into the accident had already been launched.

"We may well be conducting a joint investigation with OSH," she said. We will be looking into what happened, and making recommendations to make sure it doesn't happen again. We need to make sure these operations are handled safely," she said.

Police said attempts would be made to remove the trucks from the harbour about mid-afternoon today after the specialist dive-squad examined the scene.

- NZPA