Cyclone Gabrielle: Truckie's fight for survival in the dark and pouring rain

Wednesday, 22 February 2023

Truck driver John Milne swam across flood water and walked 3 hours up a hill to get to safety during Cyclone Gabrielle.

What was going to be a run-of-the-mill trip from Gisborne to Napier for truck driver John Milne turned into a fight for survival involving a perilous three-hour walk through crashing trees and slips with only his cellphone for light.

Milne, 59, set off from Gisborne about 4pm last Monday. He was driving a Weatherell Transport Kenworth K200 truck with a load of squash.

He’s been driving trucks for about 40 years, a lot of which has been spent on this part of State Highway 2, between Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay.

It was raining when he left Gisborne, but nothing out of the ordinary. By the time he got to Wairoa, about halfway, it was raining even less.

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Milne’s Kenworth at 'Devil's Elbow' on the Napier-Wairoa Road on SH2. Photographed by the NZDF on February 16, three days after he left it.

He was in contact with his manager and other trucks on the road, travelling in both directions. He stopped in the small settlement of Tutira, about 50km north of Napier, to check how things were looking, then carried on down a hill to the small bridge across the Aropaoanui River.

“There was a tree over the road there. A couple of Unison [electricity network company] guys showed up [having also come from the north] in a ute, and we cleared that up. It was in the next 20 minutes that it all turned to custard,” Milne said.

That was about 7pm.

The section of SH2 where ‘it all turned to custard’ for Milne.

He and the Unison guys carried on driving towards Napier. They travelled a further 2km to the ‘Devil’s Elbow’, a sharp corner where the road crosses what is usually a small stream.

Here they came across a sizeable slip that made any further progress impossible.

Milne was able to back his truck up to a point he thought would be safe. He planned to spend the night in his cab until someone came up the next morning with a front-end loader to clear the road. The Unison guys turned around and headed back towards Tutira.

What was usually a small stream at the ‘Devil’s Elbow’ had become a raging torrent.

“I backed the truck a little way up the hill, hard against the Armco barrier. I thought I’d be sweet just staying with the truck, so I just sat back listening to the radio”.

“Then the truck moved. I turned the lights on and there was about five foot (1.5m) of water. So I started it up and backed further up the hill. It was about a foot (30cm) deep where I stopped. By the time I put my boots and Swanndri on it had come back up to the door,” he said.

He got out of the truck into water. It was pitch black and pouring rain. His cellphone was his only source of light.

“I wandered up the hill. A slip came down in front of me, so I turned back to the truck. But by that stage the water was rushing really, really quick. So I waited for that slip to stop falling, then started walking up the hill again,” he said.

He headed north towards Tutira in rain he described as “like standing under a fire hose”.

“There was basically no road. I was climbing through trees, over slips, through water. There was just this crap crashing down all the time, trees snapping. There was a huge rumble like a train coming at one stage,” he said.

“I came across a stream across the road that had a rock about the size of a dinner table in it, slowly making its way down the road. I waited for that to bugger off before carrying on.

“I got tipped up and dragged across the road for about 20 feet [6m] before I could regain my feet,” he said.

He spent three tortuous hours doing that, when eventually, after about 2km, he could make out the distant lights of a vehicle.

It was the Unison guys, who had driven to Tutira then had turned back towards Napier. They’d been blocked by a slip behind them near the Aropaoanui River.

It’s unclear how much damage the Kenworth has sustained.

Milne got in the ute with the Unison guys, and they began waiting till daylight.

“If they hadn’t been there I’d be dead now. I’d be long gone. I’d probably have tried to go up that hill [towards Tutira] and the damage on that hill is just incredible,” he said.

“We heard a big slip come down in the night, so when it got light we were quite relieved to see the bridge was still there. By then the water was right up to the bridge. It was huge”.

The road back to Tutira was clearly impassable. Where there had been a road there was now a forest; a whole hillside had slipped.

“We walked up a hill when we saw a lady waving out to us. Then we saw a farmer who went and got a four-wheeler and shuttled us all to their house”.

He got changed, warmed up and waited there until 5.30pm on Tuesday when a chopper came and flew them and others to Hastings.

“We flew over the Esk Valley. It was then that we knew how bad it was, that things were out of control. The pilot had to tell me what we were looking at. There was nothing left. It’s just shocking,” he said.

After a week off he was back at work on Monday.

“I don’t ever, ever, ever want to repeat that. I was here for Bola and that’s a hundred times worse than that. We weren’t supposed to get it. We were told 150mm of rain,” he said.

Milne had seen photos of the truck that showed it had moved about 6m from where he had left it.

He’s unsure how badly damaged the truck is. It was being taken to Napier on Wednesday to be assessed.