ED added extra staff for mountain bike festival

Some people were injured while high flying at Crankworx.

Extreme mountain bike riding does have its risks as some of the athletes at Crankworx found out.

The Rotorua Hospital emergency department and St John ambulance added extra staff in preparation for the five-day event which saw some of the best mountain bike riders in the world compete.

Most of the events were held at Gravity Park at Rotorua Skyline under safety management company Peak Safety.

Lakes District Health Board communications officer Sue Wilkie said emergency department staff at Rotorua Hospital treated 43 patients thought to have been injured taking part in the lead up to, and the event itself.

"Most of the people presenting to ED had shoulder and wrist injuries. However, staff say there were a few quite serious injuries as well, including femur fractures, chest and head injuries," Miss Wilkie said.

"An additional ED consultant was brought on from Monday, March 23 through until Sunday."

Director of Peak Safety Budgie Woods said overall the event ran smoothly.

"We did have a number of patients attended to but they didn't seem disproportionate to the number of people competing," Mr Woods said.

"We had been preparing for probably nine months beforehand. We helped develop an overall safety plan for the event ... our medical response crew had met with the emergency department at the hospital and St John and we had daily correspondence with each of those teams. Both of those operations had put on additional staff but we tried not to put too much of a load on them if not needed.

"Safety management is about pre-planning to minimise injuries from happening and the other side of that is having really good medical services in place. "[Peak Safety crew] were rostered and the number varied depending on the event, at the very least we had six and the most was 17 which was during the Enduro World Series event."

Mr Woods said there was no "glaring hole" they needed to improve on but they would be reviewing and fine tuning for next year's event.

St John Lakes area territorial manager Hilary Morrish Allen said they had been communicating with Peak Safety for a month before the event.

"We had extra ambulance staff just because the number of people in town increased the likelihood of more injuries," she said.

"We would just be called for the serious [incidents] to transport from the course to hospital, mainly those who couldn't walk themselves to a private car."