Farmer crawls to safety, calls for help after quad accident

STACY SQUIRES/ The Press

INJURED: Paramedics Rod Partington, foreground, and Rick Knight arrive at the scene of a quadbike accident near Akaroa.

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A Banks Peninsula farmer was flown to Christchurch Hospital with serious injuries after his quad bike flipped yesterday.

The farmer was spraying thistles on his farm near Akaroa when the accident happened just after 11am as he attempted to drive up a steep hill.

A Westpac rescue helicopter paramedic, Rod Partington, said the bike rolled on to the farmer, inflicting "serious back injuries" and causing him to briefly lose function in his legs.

The farmer, who managed to crawl from the bike and call 111 on his cellphone, was a "very lucky chap", Partington said.

"He was quite hard to find but he could talk to us on his own phone. If he had been on his own [without communication], it would have been a different story."

Press photographer Stacy Squires, who was with the helicopter crew as part of a feature series on summer emergency services, photographed the rescue and helped carry the farmer in a stretcher to the helicopter.

There were two other callouts near Christchurch for the rescue helicopter yesterday. A woman was airlifted from McLeans Island with shoulder injuries after a mountainbiking accident and a Birdlings Flat man was taken to hospital after suffering multiple cardiac arrests.