Monday, Jan 9, 2017
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Carving up a storm During day four of this year’s Methven Summer School students worked to create masterpieces in Oamaru stone under the tutelage of carver Peter Green. The summer school wraps up tomorrow. www.guardianonline.co.nz
PHOTO JAMIE ADAIR 060117-JA-119
Tragic death in RDR BY SUE NEWMAN
SUE.N@THEGUARDIAN.CO.NZ
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A vehicle has been salvaged and its driver’s body removed after a van left the road and plunged into the Rangitata Diversion Race on Saturday morning. Forty-two-year old Shane William Forsyth of Westport was located inside the brown van that was found submerged in the race. At about 8am on Saturday a passing motorist noticed a bridge near the intersection of Prices Road just north of Mt Somers on the Arundel Rakaia Gorge Road had been damaged and stopped to investigate, Methven police officer Mike Seque said. They then called emergency services. The vehicle was submerged in about two metres of water, he said. Police crash investigation teams have
assessed the scene and the deceased’s body will be taken to Christchurch for an autopsy today. The fatality was the first on the RDR that operations manager Neill Stevens said he could recall over his 20-plus years with the RDR company. As part of the recovery of the vehicle and its driver, the RDR was shut down for several hours to allow water levels to drop, and apart from annual maintenance shut downs, this is the first time Stevens can recall the race being drained. “We got a call at 9am telling us we’d have to drain the race and that meant we had to let all the users downstream know they’d be shut off,” he said. Water was diverted into the Ashburton River and then it was simply a matter of waiting until the levels dropped to a point where salvage crews could start
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work. “No one knew if anyone was in the vehicle so they had to wait until the water was low enough to see,” he said. It was an exercise that could have taken up to 24 hours, but the salvage was completed and the water turned on again by 3pm and supplies restored to users by 9pm, Stevens said. “That’s the first fatality in my time with vehicles going into the RDR. We’ve had lots of accidents with vehicles that’ve gone into the ditch but this is the first where there’s been a fatality.” Losing access to irrigation was not a major issue for farmers at the weekend because there had been quite heavy rainfall over the previous 12 hours, he said. “If it had been like it was this time last year it would have been a different kettle of fish.”
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