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A Nelson man who was fatally crushed when his tractor tipped over a bank had worked with tractors for most of his life. One simple act could have saved his life - fastening his seatbelt.
A normally cautious man, earth-moving business owner Lindsay Rankin knew the split-second before the hydraulics on his truck failed, that he'd made a crucial error of judgement.
Playing in a partly completed house near his home ended tragically for a seven-year-old, West Auckland boy in June 2004. Sheets of plasterboard that had been left leaning against a wall on the unsecured building site fell and fatally crushed him.
Nelson mother Sue was collecting her car from a local garage after a morning in town with her sons Alex and Cody. As she went to pay the bill, three-year old Cody was fatally injured when a four-wheel drive vehicle hit him in the garage forecourt.
A 20-year old worker at a West Auckland furniture factory suffered burns to his face from a fire flash when using an outdoor incinerator in August 2004. He was new to his job at Trewheeler Manufacturing, having started a little over a week before the accident occurred.
The death of a well-known Christchurch roofing contractor is a reminder that nothing is more important than safety when people are working at heights.
A sharemilker at Rotomanu on the West Coast was lucky to survive an accident that happened when he was spreading fertiliser using a sower powered by a tractor. A passerby discovered Barry Matheson prone in a paddock wearing only a sock and a gumboot.
Contract lime spreader Mike Rowley was working on a steep farm paddock near Timaru when his truck rolled, crashing down the hillside into a gully at the bottom, shedding 1.5 tonnes of fertiliser as it went. Mike was trapped upside down in the crushed cab with a broken neck.
