State Highway 2 north of Katikati in the Bay of Plenty is now open after a serious crash earlier today.<\/p>\n
Police said they were called to the two-vehicle crash, involving a truck and van, between Wolseley Rd and Bridgman Lane around 8.50am.<\/p>\n
A Fire and Emergency New Zealand spokesperson said one person was trapped and had to be freed from a vehicle.<\/p>\n
One person was airlifted to Waikato Hospital in critical condition.<\/p>\n
Four other people were also injured in the crash, said Hato Hone St John.<\/p>\n
Two were transported to Tauranga Hospital in moderate condition and three were assessed at the scene and reported to have minor injuries.<\/p>\n
A witness who wished to remain anonymous was driving to work when the crash happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a bit shaken. It was a horrible scene to see.\u201c<\/p>\n
They said there were three cars involved including a truck.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looked like some pretty squashed cars, a truck and two cars.\u201c<\/p>\n
The witness told NZME that police said the road would be closed for five to six hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe emergency services were there very quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople had stopped to see, and someone must have called for help very quickly, which is good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police said the Serious Crash Unit has been advised.<\/p>\n
Motorists were advised to avoid the area where possible and expect delays while the highway was closed.<\/p>\n
Both police and NZTA reported the road to be open around 4.30pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"State Highway 2 north of Katikati in the Bay of Plenty is now open after a serious crash…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-187690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}