Source: Radio New Zealand
State Highway 3. Supplied/NZTA
Taranaki patients requiring surgery at Waikato Hospital have been facing gruelling road trips home due to the closure of State Highway 3.
A massive slip closed the Awakino Gorge on SH3 on 18 April.
It was scheduled to reopen on Saturday 2 May to single-lane escorted traffic.
New Plymouth woman Kylee Henderson says her mother was flown up to Hamilton last week for heart surgery, but had to be driven home by her 74-year-old father over two days.
They wanted to stop in Taumaranui on the way home on Tuesday, but pushed on because it was so cold.
“It affected Mum’s chest and breathing and stuff. So they stayed in Whanganui, which is a bit further, and Dad was thankful he did, because yesterday morning he had to rush her back up to base hospital.”
Henderson said what was normally a two-and-a-half to three-hour drive ended up closer to seven hours over two days.
“It was two massive trips that Dad had to do and one that Mum’s had to do in her state. So, now she’s back in hospital with clots in her lungs.”
Henderson thought in the circumstances her Mum should have been flown back to New Plymouth.
“A 45-minute flight or whatever, and she would have been in Taranaki Base Hospital instead of it taking Dad two days to get her home and then end up taking her there anyhow.
“Whether the clots wouldn’t have formed the same, I don’t know, because she’d got to the stage where she could hardly breathe.”
Henderson said the whole saga had brought home to her how vulnerable Taranaki was when State Highway 3 was closed.
Debris being cleared on SH3. Supplied/NZTA
Another Taranaki woman, Mel, who RNZ agreed to identify only by her first name, was facing a similar dilemma with her father.
She drove him up to Waikato Hospital for chest surgery on 20 April and travelled via Whanganui because State Highway 43 was also closed at the time.
“I’ve never driven it before, so I wasn’t super comfortable with heading that way anyway.
“So we’ve been up here since the 19th and I don’t know when we’re going to go home, but I’m not comfortable driving the Forgotten Highway and Whanganui is another couple of hours onto our trip, which is a little bit much at the moment.”
Mel, who had made four trips to Hamilton in preparation for her father’s surgery, was worried about his comfort.
“He’ll have had pretty major surgery, so sitting in a car for probably seven hours to get back via Whanganui with a break or two is not going to be the easiest process for us to navigate.”
She said problems with SH3 were getting out of hand.
“I know that the Mount Messenger bypass has caused a lot of controversy in Taranaki and around the region.
“But look we’re talking about people’s health care and we’re also talking about people’s businesses. Like Mōkau is a ghost town now.”
A slip on Awakino Gorge. Supplied / NZ Transport Agency
Health New Zealand group director operations, Taranaki, Wendy Langlands acknowledged the disruption the Awakino Gorge road closure was causing for communities who relied on access to and from the region, particularly those needing healthcare.
“We understand this can be stressful for patients and whānau but anyone requiring urgent or critical care continues to be prioritised and, where needed, is safely transported by air to services outside the region.”
Langlands said patients who needed to travel for non-urgent appointments, continued to be eligible through the National Travel Assistance scheme for financial support to help them attend their care.
The Transport Agency, which has also acknowledged the disruption caused to communities by the road closure, said it expected to reopen SH3 late afternoon on Saturday under a staged approach.
Initial access would be limited to single-lane, escorted convoys.
This would restore some access for road users while balancing the need for crucial repairs to continue, NZTA said in a statement.
It expected to be able to share convoy details and timeframes on Friday 1 May, to allow for people to plan before the weekend.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
