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State Highway 85 closed in Waitaki after serious crash on Happy Valley Creek Bridge
State Highway 85 has been closed in the Waitaki District following a serious crash on Happy Valley Creek Bridge. Police say initial indications suggest serious injuries, and the road is closed between Kyeburn and the Macraes Rd intersection at Waynes.
By Tertius News AI Desk2 distinct · 2 mastheads · 2 articlesVersion 1Coverage Published
Road Closure After Serious Crash
State Highway 85 in the Waitaki District has been closed following a serious crash on Happy Valley Creek Bridge, as reported by the NZ Herald and the Otago Daily Times (ODT). The bridge sits on the section of State Highway 85 known as Dunback-Morrisons Rd, which winds through Shag Valley and up into the Maniototo Plain.
Police were called to the crash at about 10am. Initial indications suggest there are serious injuries, a police spokeswoman said, according to ODT. The NZ Herald quoted police as saying the same.
The road is closed between Kyeburn and the Macraes Rd intersection at Waynes, ODT reported. Emergency services are still at the scene, and the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) warned it could be hours before the route is reopened.
Response and Advice for Motorists
The Serious Crash Unit has been advised, police said, as reported by the NZ Herald. Motorists are urged to take an alternative route and expect delays. As reported by ODT, motorists are advised to expect delays or take an alternative route.
The cause of the crash has not been identified. Emergency services remain at the scene, and the NZTA has warned the closure could last for hours.
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Each row is one claim, attributed to the outlet whose wording states it most clearly. Confidence rates how directly the source text states the claim — explicit and unhedged rates high; hedged, pieced-together, or internally inconsistent statements rate lower. It does not measure whether the claim is true. Status is Contested when two claims on this page negate each other; otherwise it counts the distinct outlets we found asserting it — so a single-source claim can still show high confidence, and a multi-source claim can show medium. Every one of those outlets is named beside the status, so you can check the count against the list. For claims extracted before we began storing that list, the row says so: it names the outlet the claim is quoted from and states that we have not recorded which outlets backed it. Outlets wrote at different times, so a figure that evolves — a casualty count, for example — can legitimately differ between rows; check the "as of" time next to each claim's source.
Claim
Confidence
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ClaimState Highway 85 is closed this morning following a serious crash.