A man who found his car stuck in a tree that had fallen on Atawhai Drive in the early hours of Friday morning was “freaked out” says another man who was first on the scene.
Jaden Whiunui was driving home at around 2am on Friday morning after working late at his central Nelson office.
As he drove along Atawhai Drive, he passed Bay View Rd and entered a dark patch of the highway when he saw something laying across the road.
“I thought ‘is that a log?’ Then I saw a light in it, and as I got closer, I realised that it was a car in there.
“I parked up and went up to the car and knocked on the window and said ‘are you okay?’ He was all shut in and there was water pissing all over the road.”
Jaden says the man sat in his car with the airbags deployed and in total shock.
“He was just crying and in shock. He was trying to pull me in and saying ‘thank you, thank you’, I just think he didn’t want me to go too far away. I said ‘it’s all good, you’re safe’.”
Jaden called emergency services and parked his car beyond the fallen tree to warn oncoming traffic.
It almost didn’t work.
“It was so dark that you couldn’t see it and I saw this big truck come flying along the road towards Nelson, I flashed my lights at him, but he was ignoring it until he saw the tree and slammed on his brakes. He ended up probably only three or four metres away from hitting the tree.”
He says a neighbour turned up who said he heard the tree crack and fall so jumped out of bed to come and investigate.
“It was a really big bit of wood,” says Jaden.
“It was surreal, it was so dark and until the fire fighters turned up it was really intense,” he recalls.
“A lady arrived who knew the driver and she was talking to him, he seemed to be okay, he was out and walking around.”
Police attended the scene but say there were no major injuries reported. One lane of Atawhai Dr was closed most of Friday as contractors worked to clear the debris and reopen the highway.
