|
The response of NZ Forest Service personnel to the Tangiwai Rail Disaster does not feature
in historical accounts of the tragedy. Yet it is clear that they played a pivotal role in the early response. This is acknowledged in letters of appreciation from the Prime Minister, Minister of Forests and the Director General. The accompanying newsfilm gives a background to the events preceding the disaster. Lahars are not unusual, and the other newsfilm records a more recent one. SOME IMPRESSIONS OF EVENTS ON CHRISTMAS EVE, 1953The following article was written by the late Bruce Mason when he worked for the Public Relations Sections of the Forest Service. Shortly after the Tangiwai Disaster, he visited the area and spoke to the various Forest Service participants in the rescue. This account was published in the NZFS newsletter Treeline (Jan. 1984 No. 36) to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the tragedy.
Christmas
Eve, 1953. At Karioi State Forest,
the day had been fine, and of the lazy heat which seems fitting in its lassitude
for the last full working day of the year.
The single men’s camp was empty, and the cookhouse door was shut.
Only a skeleton staff remained on the station.
The The
night was quiet at Karioi.
A light wind did no more that stir the tops of the trees.
No moonlight pierced the darkness outside the station, though the forest
offices were ablaze of light, it being the practice to leave lights burning and
so keep a load on the generator.
And in Mr McDonald’s house, the approach of Christmas was being
modestly celebrated. Into
the calm atmosphere, the wail of the siren came with the shock of a thunderclap.
The three men leapt to their feet and rushed out, McDonald and Ramsay in
their haste colliding in the doorway.
They reached forest Headquarters within half a minute, and were joined a
moment later by Ranger Woodward and Charlie Stevens, who was still pulling on
clothes as he arrived.
The question uppermost in all minds was “Where was the fire?”
They were soon answered.
Two men rushed up to them and gave their news bluntly.
The Whangaehu Railway Bridge had collapsed and the 3pm express from
Wellington had plunged into the river.
These men had seen the crash, and had come by car seeking a telephone,
had seen the blaze of light at the forest offices, but finding nobody there, had
broken a window to reach a telephone, only to find it disconnected from the
exchange. Then one of them had seen a switch on an outside wall, had pressed it
in a moment of inspiration and so roused the station.
By a freakish piece of luck this switch had been stalled only the day
before. At
first the news seemed too wild to be believed.
The Main Trunk Line has for many years seemed indestructible, as solid
and safe as say, the Bank of England.
It seemed almost that the sun could fail to rise as plausibly as that the
express should not go through.
Ranger Woodward asked for the news to be repeated.
Convinced, he detailed the Fire Equipment Officer McDonald to go to the
bridge immediately taking vehicles, first aid equipment, stretchers, torches,
some tools and a fire tanker equipped with a swivel light, opened the telephone
exchange, and informed the Railway officials at Ohakune, and asked the telephone
operator to advise the police and doctors. Within
ten minutes, the Fire Equipment Officer had arrived at the river.
It was very dark.
He discovered to his amazement that the river was in turbid flood, though
no word of this had reached them at the time of the alarm.
The river must have been up fully twenty-five feet.
It had burst over its banks, and tons of silt was spilling over the road
and all over the area.
Two surviving piers of the bridge could be seen in faint outline, with
railway coaches still on them. The rest of the bridge had vanished.
Dark shapes faintly discernible as engine and carriages were sprawled
about as casually as toys in a nightmare children’s nursery, and dark blobs
being tossed and tumbled in the water revealed themselves as human beings only
at close range.
The roar of the waters swallowed every other sound.
The Road Bridge close by was still holding, though with difficulty.
Tons of water and silt were sweeping across its deck, and its piles were
choked with debris. After
taking in this scene, which in its starkness he found somewhat numbing to the
understanding, McDonald made his way to a caravan stranded on the edge of the
floodwaters. It had been caught in
the wash from the river, slewed by the force of the spilling water, and marooned
on the fringe of the flood. A light
was burning in it, and as McDonald approached, a man appeared:
”No”
replied McDonald, “but I’m a member of the St John’s Ambulance Brigade”. “Well
do something about my mother will you? I
think she’s fainted”. McDonald rendered first aid, and
asked the man’s permission to set up a first aid post in the caravan.
Permission was granted immediately, and McDonald transferred his gear
into the caravan. Three private cars arrived soon after and parked near the
caravan. Their occupants rushed
into the flood and began to haul out survivors, and lead, carry or support them
to the first aid post. They were a pitiful sight.
Shocked, filthy, choked with silt and half blind with oil, they seemed
mercifully dazed by the convulsion of nature in which they had been so
tragically precipitated. A voice
from the river “Hey, can you give a light?
Can’t see a bloody thing down here”. Light
was the main obstacle to rescue at this stage, and at all stages.
The darkness seemed as impenetrable and solid as a wall.
The fire tanker with its swivel light could not approach closely enough
to be of much use, and so three cell torches, which McDonald had included in his
gear, were distributed to helpers. For
awhile these tiny stabs of light had to act as the only distress beacons on the
northern bank towards which half-drowned survivors groped their way. Ranger
Woodward arrived at a quarter to eleven. He
had left Forest Workman John Smith behind his at Forest Headquarters to answer
the telephone and make supplies of equipment available.
Quickly sizing up the magnitude of the situation, Ranger Woodward formed
his small detachment into an organised body and went into the river with them to
grapple with life and death in the cold and darkness. Within
half an hour there was a steady flow of survivors through the first aid post.
They were examined by Fire Officer McDonald and passed by him as fit
either for temporary quartering in private houses, or as injured and needing
treatment in hospital. Forest
Service vehicles for a while performed this service alone, but they were joined
later by private cars to ferry survivors. The owner of the caravan had a large store of spirits which he hoped would enliven his Christmas, and this with a generous hand, he poured down the throats of survivors half dead from the cold and shock. An enormous Christmas cake, baked no doubt by loving hands, disappeared in large chunks within a few minutes. This prodigality of spirit formed a heartening counterpoint to the tragedy which accompanied almost every survivor. If alive, they could scarcely comprehend their luck in their distress at being sundered from their families. McDonald and his assistants did their best to soothe the bewildered and sometimes half-demented victims. One woman arrived with her son, both uninjured, but distressed for news of her husband and daughter. She implored McDonald to see if he could find them. McDonald, without any hope of success, duly dashed off into the dark to relieve the poor woman’s feelings and stumbled into a man carrying the inert body of a young girl. He brought them to the first aid post, and by one of those bizarre coincidences by which fate sometimes seems to mitigate its sudden blows, he found that they were the missing members of the woman’s family. The girl was alive, though unconscious from swallowing crude oil. In
the meantime Ranger Woodward, other Forest Service officers and a large number
of private persons were attacking partly submerged carriages, and conveying
people from them by breaking windows and cutting sections from the roof with the
welding torches which McDonald had providentially included in his gear.
For many years now, Fire Officer McDonald had heard the express pass over
the Whangaehu Bridge, clatter down a straight track for a mile or so, then
whistle as it is about to take the corner into Ohakune.
He has often said that he can never go to bed until he hears that whistle
and knows that the express is all right. A
friend asked him once “What would you do if you didn’t hear the whistle?”
“Get my welding gear out smartly,” said McDonald.
Now alas it was being used. Within
an hour hundreds of people arrived from Ohakune and the district by car.
At this time there was no traffic officer on duty and when he arrived
from Ohakune a queue of cars half a mile long stretched back from the river.
The cars so congested the approach to the bridge that it was difficult
for vehicles carrying survivors to turn and move away.
The traffic officer did his best to check the flow by improvising a road
block at Karioi, but it was too late to prevent an awkward and encumbering
congestion. Among
the party from Ohakune was Dr Jordan who inspected the first aid post, and
seemed impressed with what he saw. Feeling
confident that it was dealing with all survivors in a professional manner, he
decided to cross the road bridge to the southern bank.
The flood waters, in the three quarters of an hour since the crash, had
receded markedly. Millions of tons
of silt were by now spread over a wide area.
At the height of the flood, Tractor Driver C. Stevens happened to put his
hand in the water, and closed it with difficulty round solid silt.
Although it was Christmas Eve and the weather had been warm, rescue work
was bitterly cold, as huge chunks of ice were being borne down on the flood.
Most of the helpers were dressed in clothing suitable for celebrating a
warm Christmas Eve, and the rigours of rescue soon froze them to the bone. A
few moments after Dr Jordan had been through the first aid post, another doctor
arrived, Captain McDonald of Waiouru Camp, who crossed by the road bridge from
the southern to the northern bank, to find out whether medical aid was
available. He also inspected the
first aid post, and expressed his unqualified approval of its efficiency.
He found that his namesake, John McDonald, had brought a far more
comprehensive medical kit from Karioi than his own from Waiouru, and he began
first aid treatment with it. Within
a few minutes of Dr McDonald’s arrival, the southern approach to the road
bridge washed away, and the bridge subsided gently to the bed of the river at
the southern end of it. Dr
McDonald, finding himself marooned, decided to leave the first aid post in the
capable hands of John McDonald, and visit the homes where survivors had been
sent to render further treatment if necessary.
The Superintendent of St John’s Ambulance Ohakune arrived soon after,
and also began operation in the first aid post. An
hour after the crash, hundreds of people must have been working at Tangiwai.
At no time was there a shortage of willing helpers.
The Army and Navy from Waiouru both had detachments out searching the
banks for survivors and exploring the wreckage for bodies. By this time, the police had taken charge of rescue
operations, though in their isolation from the main body of rescuers, it was
some time before the police discovered the Forest Service Party and knew what
they were doing. Although
the road bridge approach had been washed out, a piece of clever improvisation by
the Forest Service party soon made it passable. A length of rope which they had brought with them formed an
upper rung, and a fire hose the lower, of a double tightrope which was set in
place by naval ratings on the southern side, and the Forest Service and Post and
Telegraph workers to the north. They
were later replaced by forty-foot planks, procured from a nearby sawmill. All
this time the trickle of survivors had been passing out of the river, ferried to
safety by the devoted bank of rescuers. By
one o’clock in the morning, the main work of rescue was over.
As the Forest Service party wore only the lightest of clothing and shoes,
and were by now half frozen from cold and exposure, Ranger Woodward gave orders
that all men were to return home for a change of clothing, heavier boots and a
hot drink. What
in the meantime was happening at the homes?
Fire Officer McDonald’s house was full, with a married couple and their
daughter whose fiancee had perished in the crash; a young man from Ohakune,
filthy and surprisingly cheerful; and two others who seemed to be in
considerable pain. They were
dripping crude oil, and within a few minutes the house reeked of it.
Every blanket in the house went to warm them and every stitch of spare
clothing to replace their sodden rags. Two
of the survivors were so weak that they could not get out of their clothes, and
Mrs McDonald had to cut their clothes off.
When Dr McDonald arrived on his tour, he found that both were badly
injured in the chest and he sent them forthwith to Raetihi Hospital.
Mrs John Smith, wife of the workman manning the telephone exchange, had a
family of four in her house. It was the family that John McDonald had united in
so providential a manner. She too,
though she had been in her house only a little over a week, opened it to the
survivors with the grace and generosity that marked all those involved in rescue
and resuscitation. After
and hour’s rest, all Forest Service men returned to the river and worked
throughout the night. First light
came shortly after 4am on Christmas morning.
Slowly the pale light illuminated the ravaged landscape.
It was a sight that no one there is likely to forget.
Engine, tender and carriages, some twisted and splintered as if ground
into the silt by a giant heel, lay strewn about.
Enormous concrete plinths lay at bizarre angles as if some latter-day
Stonehenge had suddenly collapsed. Everywhere
the sludge and mud reduced the whole landscape to a gray neutrality, as if by
this vast smear the scale of the tragedy could be muddied over. The
rescuers soon found that it could not. For
now began the most arduous and beastly task of all – searching the river and
its banks for bodies. All Forest
Service vehicles were placed at the disposal of the rescue organisation.
They were used to transport search parties and to carry bodies to the
Whangaehu Road Bridge where they were taken to Waiouru by stretcher and
ambulance. Some
of the Forest Service men had never seen a dead body before.
They were to see many before their work was done, some looking oddly
serene and untroubled, others so battered that it made them wonder id humanity
could ever have invested these sickening, gray, sprawling things.
Many of them were naked; the force of the torrent removing even shoes and
socks. High above the river, a mark
of its swollen path, was a grotesque array of miscellaneous clothing hanging
from scrub and bush, arranged as if for some horrible old clothes drive.
Some bodies were extremely difficult to extricate from unused bays and
eddies where the force of the river had lodged them.
Sometimes a disembodied limb projecting from a heap of silt gave a clue,
sometimes a child’s toy, clutched to the end, guided the rescuers to a pitiful
little body. All
Forest Service men absent on leave volunteered their services as soon as they
heard the news, and all were employed in search parties throughout Christmas Day
until dark, and until the evening of Boxing Day when their services were no
longer required by the organisation. From
this date until the evening of the 29th December, the only Forest
Service man still required was Charlie Stevens. Before joining the Forest Service, Mr Stevens had been a
shepherd in the Whangaehu River Valley for twenty-five years. He knew the whole area down to the township of Whangaehu with
an intimacy unrivaled in the district. He
was given an Army truck by the authorities at Waiouru, and for two days worked
up and down the river. He found
that the turbulent course of the flood had entirely changed the topography of
some areas that he had known since a boy. Whole
banks were stripped of several feet of vegetation, leaving the smooth rock
underneath it like a newly depilated skull.
Bodies were found in places so outlandish that white men had never
penetrated there before. For
example, Mr Stevens saw what appeared to be a child’s knee just visible from a
forty-foot bluff. Lowered down by
ropes, he examined it and found it to be the arm of a young girl buried in feet
of silt. It took over two hours to
dig the body out and hoist if up the bluff. Some
bodies were enormously heavy, as they had filled up with silt after life became
extinct. It was two days of
extremely arduous and often horrifying work.
When Mr Stevens work was over, the Forest Service completed their
contribution to the saving of life and rescuing of bodies at Tangiwai. Tangiwai
now – a gray desert, marked for ever in the history of New Zealand.
A natural convulsion, a freakish combination of circumstances, on the
night before the greatest Christian festival killed 150 people and left a nation
in mourning. How many had heard the
name Tangiwai before Christmas Day 1953? Yet
now the name cannot be said without it sounding like a melancholy bell in the
imagination of everyone in this country. And
to the men of the Forest Service at Karioi, that bell will sound a note less of
melancholy than of arduous effort, and a prodigal expenditure of fellow feeling. Does
suffering degrade or ennoble human beings?
Philosophers are still debating it.
But one this is clear.
That faced with tragedy on an epic scale such as happened at Tangiwai,
eye-witnesses and others close at hand will rally in an heroic manner, to right
the balance as it were, between themselves whom fate has not chosen and those
struck down by it.
This was abundantly proved at Tangiwai, and by none more than the
officers and men of the New Zealand Forest Service. Meanwhile, Back at the Station....We're all aware of the support that families of firefighters provide
in times of emergency. This was no less true with the Tangiwai disaster. John
McDonald's daughter, Pam Rogers, wrote this account in October 2006 of what was
happening at home during Chistmas 1953. I
remember the get together that Mum & Dad had that night. I had wanted to
stay up as I felt that I was grown up enough. Just before it all began, I had
had to go to bed. I recall the siren and the panic for the men to get out and
over to the fire station. I remember getting up and going out to The
next day we had no Xmas dinner as such. Mum cooked chickens (which were what we
were going to have anyway) along with pots of potatoes, etc. My two sisters had
slept all night and didn't know what had happened. We never saw our Dad that
day. We had people coming and going all the time for the first day.
Then just a few staying until arrangements could be made for them to get
home. There was a young girl who had lost her fiancee and every time the list of
missing people found was put over the radio and his name was not there, she
would disappear into the forest over the fence. I was delegated to watch her
each time and when she took off I had to run and get Mum so that she could go
and sit with her and stop her from doing something silly. I got a watch for that
Xmas but somehow it got water into it while all this was happening, and although
Dad tried to fix it later on, it was stuffed. I
remember Dad coming home one day and he had a big truck. We asked what was m the
truck and he said that there, were some bodies that: he was taking into the
hospital. Fay, my sister, decided that she wanted to see these dead bodies. So
she climbed up the truck and tried to have a look. I was a tell tale and ran and
told Dad as I didn’t think it was right. She didn’t get a hiding but she was
growled at and lifted down from the truck. We never did get to see the bodies
for which I can say now that I was pleased about. I guess in retrospect that
they would not have been a pleasant sight I
can remember being taken down to Tangiwai by Dad some days later. He took all of
us so as we could see it all and it was a horrible sight. The place was just a
mess and nothing like it should have been. The roads had all disappeared and mud
and silt was everywhere. It was a sight that to this day I will never forget. There
was a man who was saved and stayed with us who owned a vineyard somewhere up
Auckland way. I remember each year for many years a huge crate of grates being
sent to us every year. Then one year they never came and when I asked once why
they stopped, Dad said that it was time to let go and forget. I can understand
that but boy were those grapes lovely. It
was just the following year that we were posted to Palmerston North as Mum just
wanted to get away from all the memories. |
the main room to ask if all was OK. Mum said it was fine and to go back to bed.
