Two people were stuck in a vehicle for more than two hours surrounded by live power lines after a crash at Milburn closed the road for most of the morning yesterday.<\/p>\n
Emergency services were called to the scene about 7.50am.<\/p>\n
However, rescuers had to stand well back due to a plethora of live wires surrounding the crash on the Waihola Highway, south of Dunedin.<\/p>\n
The crashed vehicle was a removal truck with two occupants inside, one of whom had to be airlifted to Dunedin Hospital.<\/p>\n
Milton Volunteer Fire Brigade Chief Fire Officer Robbie Philips said firefighters had to stand about 100m back until the power could be isolated and PowerNet deemed it safe to approach.<\/p>\n
He said the crash site was a “complex” spot in terms of power.<\/p>\n
“They\u2019d hit a transformer … and it’s fed from four different spots \u2014 to isolate it was quite a bit of work; the power company did a good job getting that done as quickly as they did.”<\/p>\n
After the power was isolated, the passenger was able to get out unaided.<\/p>\n
However, the driver needed assistance, he said.<\/p>\n
A Hato Hone St John spokesman said one helicopter, one ambulance and two rapid response vehicles attended.<\/p>\n
One person was airlifted to Dunedin Hospital in a serious condition and the other was transported by ambulance in a moderate condition, the spokesman said.<\/p>\n
The highway reopened about 2pm.<\/p>\n
An update from PowerNet showed overhead line damage affecting Clarendon, Milburn and Waihola. \u2014 Allied Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two people were stuck in a vehicle for more than two hours surrounded by live power lines after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-339872","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\/339872","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=339872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}