Rips Audio Video and Spas president Leon Durand and employee Chris Birch were among the first people on the scene when a vehicle flew into a fence, garage and two homes Friday morning (Feb. 3).
The vehicle, travelling on 54th Street, jumped the curb, knocked a street light down and launched into the air, smashing a fence, garage, and parts of two houses on Balsam Crescent at about 10 a.m. The interior of a bedroom in one home could be seen as a result of the crash.
Durand and Birch were coming back from a service call when they came across the accident. He thinks the vehicle involved may have been an SUV but when he was there, it was too buried in the wreckage for him to be sure.
"Chris and I tried to get through to help the people," Durand said. "We couldn't get through from the yard he blasted through because it was too tight between the house and what was left of the garage. And the vehicle was buried way deep into the garage.
"So we'd jumped over the fence. We had to climb over top of the fence to get into the backyard, go through the snow and jump over the deck rail to get to the people.
"They were both awake and cognizant and seemed to be relatively unhurt. The one was complaining about sore ribs and there was a little bit of blood so we got some Kleenex to take care of that and in the meantime, just left them in place. We didn't want to move them until the EMTs got there.
"So I just started clearing away debris so that they could actually get to maybe the door and stand beside the door where the driver was," Durand said.
"He was talking to us - to Chris and myself," he added. "We were asking him if he was OK and if there were any particular parts that were bothering him."
They complained of sore ribs.
Durand was amazed at the force of the crash.
"It pushed the deck (of the adjacent house) to the side. I'd say that deck probably moved that much," he said, using his hands to show a space of about 1.5 to two feet.
He noticed that the railing of a deck from the adjacent house was hanging over the vehicle.
"So I ripped that off and I took off some of his verticals that were holding up the rail and just kept throwing debris over the rails so that we could get through there, because I knew sooner or later they were going to have to figure out a way to get them out of there.
"Then we managed to get the gate open; shovelled some snow so they could open the gate. The EMTs needed to come through. Everybody showed up pretty quickly after that," Durand said.
"The wipers were going and the blinker was going. We thought, ëdo you have a key?' It sounds like they just have a push button one. We didn't know if the computer got buggered up; they couldn't shut it off, but we never did get the windshield wiper to stop going.
"The concern was of course, if you don't shut everything off and there's gasoline dripping down here and we can't get you out, if something happens, now what? What do you do?" he added.
Durand is amazed more people weren't hurt as a result of the crash.
"It's lucky nobody got hurt; lucky there wasn't anybody in that intersection that might have gotten hurt. That's a busy intersection. I was kinda surprised nobody got hit there," he said.
He agreed it could have been much worse if it had occurred about an hour or more earlier when kids were going to the nearby Deer Meadow School - or later, when some of those kids would have been going home for lunch.
He also shudders to think what it would have been like if the vehicle had carried on further to the school before jumping the curb.
Durand also expressed concern about the residents of the home where the bedroom was torn open. The gas was turned off at the time of the accident because emergency crews and witnesses could smell gas.
"Now they've got to start worrying about freeze-up, because it was 21 below when we went to do this service call," Durand said.
A couple of weeks ago, Durand suffered a concussion during a skiing accident.
My wife said, ëdidn't you remember about your head?' ÖI said I wasn't thinking about that," he said.
He said adrenalin simply kicked in. He took a St. John's Ambulance course many years ago after being in a 31-car pileup and having witnessed many other accidents.
The concern was of course, if you don't shut everything off and there's gasoline dripping down here and we can't get you out, if something happens, now what? What do you do?"LEON DURAND
