Four dead, multiple injuries after truck and van crash near Ashburton

Friday, 4 June 2021

Four people died when a truck and a van collided at the intersection of Cochranes and Wakanui roads near Ashburton shortly before 10am on June 4.

A woman held the hands of trapped survivors through a broken window to comfort them while damaged power lines dangled overhead just after a crash that killed four people near Ashburton.

The collision between a truck and a van happened at the intersection of Cochranes and Wakanui roads in Elgin shortly before 10am on Friday.

Mid-South Canterbury area commander Inspector David Gaskin said three people died at the scene and another person died at Ashburton Hospital.

The driver of the truck was injured, though “not badly”, and was in hospital receiving treatment, Gaskin told media in Ashburton shortly before midday.

A van witnesses say drove through a controlled intersection in rural Ashburton was struck by a truck, killing four people.

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A person from the van remained in a critical condition and another person had serious injuries.

The people in the van were all adults from the North Island, he said.

The van was shunted into a power pole, snapping it in half.

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“This is an absolute tragedy … it appears that a moment's inattention has caused this tragedy.

“I just urge people to be careful, to take their time, and remember that tomorrow the sun will come up and make sure you get there and see it.”

One of the first people on the scene, a nearby resident who declined to be named, heard a bang and rushed to the intersection.

Four people died after a truck and a van collided at the intersection of Cochranes and Wakanui roads in Elgin, near Ashburton.

“I just went to the van, and I could see that there were a few deceased. All I did was stand there with my arms in the window to comfort the other two that were talking until the emergency services got there and got them out,” they said.

“They just held my arms and I just continually kept talking to them and told them we knew that there was somebody on the way.”

When she arrived there was a couple of other cars, but no-one wanted to get near the van.

“There was a powerline hanging down … but just something you've got to do it, don't you? You'd hope somebody else would do it for your family if anything like that ever happened.”

Gaskin said it appeared the van had driven through a controlled intersection in a “moment's carelessness”.

The recent flooding and heavy rain in the area was not a factor.

The crash was a “tragedy” for four families and the driver of the truck who would be “feeling it for a long time”, he said.

“Any fatality has a hardship on the community. Ashburton and the Mid-Canterbury area has suffered a number of these type of accidents.

“It's up to all of us to do our bit, and hopefully we'll all get home.”

There has only been one other crash at the intersection of Cochranes and Wakanui roads since January 2000, which resulted in no injuries, according to NZTA crash data. (File photo).

A Stuff reporter taken through the scene by police observed the entire front left side of the van was crumpled. It was resting against a power pole. The disaster victim identification team had been on-site earlier in the day.

A Wakanui Rd resident said they had their chainsaw going when they heard a “horrendous bang”.

The man, who did not want to be named, could see the power pole on a lean and the back end of the van.

His partner, who was closer to the scene, told him there had been a “big crash”.

The man grabbed a fire extinguisher and rushed over to help. When he arrived he saw a van that appeared to have been “shunted down the road”.

A neighbour was talking to a woman through the broken passenger window of the van.

“There was a couple talking … we just had to keep them calm until the ambulance got there.”

He said the scene was “pretty devastating”.

He believed those in the van were middle-aged.

Wakanui Rd resident Gerald Dolan said the crash was very loud and caused his house to vibrate, so much so that he initially thought a bomb had gone off nearby.

Dolan said it appeared a truck, which had an aluminium bulk bin on the back, was travelling along Wakanui Rd when it smashed into the side of a van.

He said the truck had shunted the van across the road and into a nearby power pole, snapping it.

“When I went out the van was clean through the power pole and the truck was stuck in the side of the van and it had pushed it about 30 metres up the road.”

Dolan, who has lived in the area for 11 years, said he had been saying for many years that it was just a matter of time before there was a serious crash at the intersection.

“I stand in my backyard here and I look across and I watch these vehicles come across Cochranes Rd and they just don't give way, they go straight across.”

Dolan said he also had problems with the lack of road markings at the intersection. “[Motorists] come down Cochranes Rd so fast sometimes … they just ignore the stop sign.”

The council had recently replaced the power pole near the intersection and he believed it obscured drivers’ views when they had stopped, he said.

The intersection had stop signs on both sides.

Council infrastructure services group manager Neil McCann said the council had not received any complaints regarding speed, or a lack of road markings on Cochranes Rd and Wakanui Rd, in the last five years.

In that time it received four reports relating to sign damage, the most recent in December 2019, but all had been fixed.

He declined to comment on the power poles as they were managed by EA Networks.

The Ashburton region has been battered by damaging floods this week.

“It's just such tragic news to go on top of what we have been through over the last wee,” Ashburton mayor Neil Brown said.

“The week started off with the rain and the aftermath and dealing with that until about Tuesday and there was the cleanup and the river and then the bridge …. it just kept coming.

“Coming to today we thought we had gone through it all and then to hear that four people died in a car accident and dealing with that sort of stuff on top of everything else…”

According to Waka Kotahi/NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) crash data, there have been at least 16 other fatal crashes on Canterbury roads so far this year. Nationally, there have been at least 138 deaths on the roads during the same period.

There has only been one other crash at the intersection of Cochranes and Wakanui roads since January 2000, which resulted in no injuries, according to NZTA crash data.

Earlier on Friday, a motorcyclist died in a collision at the intersection of Riccarton Rd and Hansons Ln in Upper Riccarton, Christchurch.