• McCaw is commercial helicopter pilot after retiring from game • ‘I got woken up at midnight ... yeah a bit scary,’ he says of earthquake

The former All Blacks great Richie McCaw, who is now a commercial pilot after retiring from rugby in 2015, has been flying rescue workers in the wake of the 7.5 magnitude earthquake in New Zealand.

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McCaw has been ferrying teams to Kaikoura, where one person died in a collapsed home, and has also been flying reconnaissance missions.

“Like everyone else, I got woken up at midnight ... yeah a bit scary,” he told the New Zealand Herald, adding that he had flown the New Zealand Fire Service around the Kaikoura area to “check out all the slips and make sure everyone was accounted for”.

He said he saw a number of cracks in roads and spotted a railway line that had been pushed out over the sea by a landslip. “It would not have been a nice place to be at midnight last night,” he added.

McCaw retired from rugby union in 2015 and said his focus would turn to Christchurch Helicopters, where he is a director and shareholder. In November last year he used his flying licence to help out at Marlborough’s vineyards, where helicopters were used to battle frost.