CENTREVILLE, N.S. — A woman was thrown across her bedroom Saturday morning after a car crashed into her Kings County home.
A Honda Civic left the road and appeared to have pitchpoled and rolled across more than 40 metres of the yard before crashing into the side of the old farmhouse on Sherman Belcher Road in Centreville. It hit the home with its roof or side, leaving a dented hole in the side of the house.
One of the occupants got himself out of the car after the 7:30 a.m. crash, but a second was trapped inside. Kentville firefighters cut the roof partially off the vehicle to free the man.
Inside the home, Tonya Ward and her husband Nick Stern were in bed.
“We were just waking up. My six-year-old had just come in to say she had put the puppy out to pee. She walked out of the bedroom, shut the door, and suddenly we heard glass shattering. It sounded like an earthquake had happened. Both my girls started screaming, so we jumped up to see where the broken glass was.”
Looking down the set of stairs, “we saw a big dust cloud down the steps, walked down and saw Nanny’s bedroom door across the room in the other room. It was like something you see in the movies. It was a dust haze. I couldn’t find her, but I could hear her, so I knew she was there.”
Her grandmother had been on the couch, which was against the wall the car hit.
The dresser was thrown into the doorway, blocking it.
Her couch spun around and threw her off the couch. She was clear across the room, leaning over her computer chair.
“We could see out through the house, so we realized a car had hit the house.”
With the grandmother seeming relatively unscathed, Ward called 911 while her husband went out to check on the occupants of the car.
She called her father, uncle, and a friend to come help clear the doorway to get her grandmother out.
She said her grandmother was shaken by the incident and complained of her ribs being sore when she was taken to hospital, adding “but other than that I think she’s alright.”
She said her husband suggested that the occupants of the car stay inside, but one got himself out.
“Nick and I worked until the emergency crews arrived to get the other man to stay still. He had quite a severe head wound and kept trying to get up, so we told him just stay still and wait for (paramedics and firefighters).”
The car crashed only five or six metres from where her daughter had tied out the dog before the crash.
“(The dog) had climbed in underneath the step and wouldn’t come out.”
That’s also the spot where her daughter has a play area and sometimes plays with the puppy.
“Thank God she actually came back in the house. I guess it’s good that it was a rainy morning and not a sunny one.”
There was extensive damage to the house, and the foundation appeared to have shifted slightly. Mud from the crash reached the second level, and hit the roof on another section of the house. A branch about four metres up a tree along the course of the car was broken.
It was the second severe crash in front of the home in three weeks, she said, and third in a year. On March 24 of 2018, a car crashed and landed about a metre short of where the car did Saturday morning, but didn’t hit the house.
“My family has long advocated that the speed (limit) needs to be adjusted on this road,” Ward said. “This has been going on for years. There are always accidents on this turn.... they usually end up in the yard.
The house sits on a straight stretch of road that comes out of bend in the road, for south-bound traffic, where the speed limit is 80 km/h.
RCMP said the cause of the crash is still under investigation.
