Two people have died in a helicopter crash near Wellington today, police say.<\/p>\n
Emergency services were called to the scene, in the Paek\u0101k\u0101riki Hill area, north of Wellington, by an automated crash alert at 7.30am.<\/p>\n
Inspector Ren\u00e9e Perkins said both the pilot and sole passenger were found dead at the scene.<\/p>\n
She said police were working to remove the bodies from the area and cordons were in place around the Battle Hill campground.<\/p>\n
Police would work alongside the Civil Aviation Authority to examine the scene.<\/p>\n
A person working nearby was first on the scene and told RNZ it was nearly impossible to land. The terrain is very steep, full of gorse and scrub.<\/p>\n
The witness said he checked the vital signs of one of the people, who was in the wreckage,\u00a0 and they were dead.<\/p>\n
The chopper was unrecognisable, he said.<\/p>\n
A rescue helicopter arrived as he was making the check on the victim, the man said.<\/p>\n
Shortly afterwards, he said another person was located some distance from the wreckage on steep terrain in thick scrub.<\/p>\n
“It’s not my first. I spent 27 years in search and rescue – so it’s not something new to me,” the man said.<\/p>\n
He said he understood the helicopter was involved in goat culling in the area.<\/p>\n
He attempted to shut the helicopter off as fuel was running out of the aircraft, but could not access the switch.<\/p>\n
“Because there’s fuel leaking out and the machine was still turned on, we took the safe option and we moved out of the way.”<\/p>\n
Conditions were sunny with light winds.<\/p>\n
Maritime NZ’s Rescue Coordination Centre is coordinating search efforts.\u00a0 A spokesperson said two rescue helicopters and police were at the scene.<\/p>\n
Fire and Emergency NZ sent two crews from Porirua, along with their “line rescue team”. Also known as rope rescue personnel, they are trained in high-angle, vertical, or challenging terrain, often handling rescues at height or in confined spaces.<\/p>\n
The newly appointed police Assistant Commissioner, Corrie Parnell, and staff from\u00a0Greater Wellington Regional Council were also at the scene.<\/p>\n
RNZ understands authorities were meeting this afternoon and were struggling to access the site.<\/p>\n
Park rangers and teams on all-terrain vehicles have been trying to make the scene more accessible.<\/p>\n
While helicopters were in the air this morning, an RNZ reporter at the scene said Flight Radar was no longer showing choppers in the area.<\/p>\n
A police cordon has been set up at the turnoff to the Battle Hill Farm and campsite in Paek\u0101k\u0101riki Hill Rd.<\/p>\n
The search area is near Pukerua Bay where three people died in a crash involving an Air Force helicopter on Anzac Day in 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two people have died in a helicopter crash near Wellington today, police say. Emergency services were called to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-256317","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256317","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=256317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}