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Special Forces of the Fire Department
The Ngāruawāhia Volunteer Fire Department found 18 cows trapped in the Waipā River on Wednesday.
An indescribable cry to the cows trapped in the mud led to a bovine rescue mission in a river like no other.
A herd of 18 cows had an unexpectedly long night swimming in the Waipā River when they got stuck.
Teams from the Ngāruawāhia Voluntary Fire Brigade arrived at the scene around 9 am on Wednesday, about 5 km upstream from Ngāruawāhia Road.
Voluntary fire brigade
Huntly’s rescue boat herds cows down the WaipÄ ?? River bank.
“It was incredible,” said Senior Station Officer Marty Kampman.
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And when Kampman saw 18 cows in the water, he thought, “I need a plan.”
Most of the cows were huddled against the bank of a steep river some 4 meters high.
“There was nowhere else they could really go. It was security in numbers. “
Volunteer fire brigade
Cows roam the trench looking for safety and food.
A local farmer among the volunteers suggested digging a trench on the river bank to remove the animals.
He used his 12-ton excavator to dig the 2m deep trench.
With the Ngāruawāhia jet ski and the Huntly rescue boat in hand, the crews drove the cattle to shore.
All the animals climbed to safety except for one, Kampman said.
That cow was trapped in the mud for 15 minutes and did not turn around, so crews pushed her and used ropes to pull her out.
Volunteer fire brigade
A cow got stuck in the mud and couldn’t get out for 15 minutes.
Although it is still a mystery how the cows ended up in the river, Kampman suspected they got scared overnight and went through a farm fence.
He calculated that they were in the water for about 10 hours.
“They were very exhausted and tired.”
But they happened to wander along the shore and began to graze almost immediately.
The job was a challenge to solve and a welcome change from medical incidents and car accidents.
“Some of us had been on a call the day before at the Whatawhata intersection where we were involved in extracting people from cars.”
It’s fair to say that Wednesday’s mission was the most unusual animal labor he has come across in his 45 years with the brigade.
“We have had horses, we have had sheep, we have had dogs, but this is the most unusual, just the large number of cows.”
