One injured in farm bike accident north of Napier

A rescue helicopter at work in Hawke's Bay. Photo / NZME

One person was flown to Hawke’s Bay Hospital with what were initially reported to be serious injuries on Monday after a farm bike accident on a property in Northern Hawke’s Bay, near where a section of State Highway 2 had been closed by an overnight rock fall.

The farm incident was reported about 9.20am today, and police said the closure of the road because of the slip in the Waikare Gorge, north of Putorino – midway between Napier and Wairoa – had caused some difficulties for emergency services responding from Napier.

A detour on narrower country roads and the difficulties, police said, were because of traffic. A Lowe Corporation Hawke’s Bay Helicopter Rescue Service helicopter flew to the farm scene and returned to the hospital in Hastings with the injured person about 11.20am.

A woman, aged in her 20s, was being assessed. The earlier and unrelated rock fall filled both lanes in a narrow section of the gorge road, but national highways management agency Waka Kotahi NZTA said about 11.40am contractors had worked from daybreak and the highway had reopened.

Plans are currently being made for a realignment of State Highway 2 in the vicinity of the gorge, with a preferred option of building one of New Zealand’s highest road bridges over the gorge – a 160-metres-long structure about 60 metres high.

By comparison, State Highway 5′s Mohaka Bridge, between Napier and Taupo, is about 50 metres above the riverbed.

The proposed realignment is about 3.9km and west of the 6km of current state highway, and rock-drilling had been to a depth of 70 metres to inform design which was expected to be completed by the end of this year, kick-starting funding processes but without any suggestion of a date by which the realignment might be completed.