Portal:New Zealand/Selected picture/Week 33, 2006

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Tangiwai Area, showing the Highway Road Bridge, near the disaster site.
Tangiwai Area, showing the Highway Road Bridge, near the disaster site.

The Whangaehu River is a large river in central North Island of New Zealand. Its headwaters are the crater lake of Mount Ruapehu on the central plateau, and it flows into the Tasman Sea eight kilometres southeast of Wanganui. The sudden collapse of part of the Ruapehu crater wall on December 24, 1953 led to New Zealand's worst railway accident, the Tangiwai disaster.