Wednesday, 02 September 2015 14:23

Wires are a killer!

Written by Rural News Group

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Alan Beck a pilot and chairman of the NZ Agricultural Aviation Association, says it’s now socially unacceptable for farmers not to remove electric fence or television wires strung across gullies.

Beck is frustrated that some farmers don’t make a priority of removing wires. And while Federated Farmers – as an organisation -- supports him, some of its members don’t, so he’s now getting the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to take action against farmers who won’t remove dangerous wires.

“CAA is looking at a procedure where pilots have to report an incident involving a dangerous wire and CAA will get WorkSafe NZ to make the farmer deal with it,” Beck told Rural News.

“It’s not acceptable that 27 pilots have been killed including Peter Robb in Whanganui. There have been 14 wire strikes in the last year including one where our vice-chairman hit a wire in Hawkes Bay and was really lucky not to be killed,” he adds.

“A lot of farmers don’t think there is too much risk. It’s only when one of our pilots hits one and gets killed or badly injured that they are very, very, sorry.”

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