A couple from Fletcher has had a lucky escape after an eight tonne runaway truck and trailer ploughed into their bedroom, a few hours before they were about to turn in for the night.
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The bedlam began at about 7pm on Saturday, as the truck rolled down the driveway of a home on Britannia Boulevarde, where it had been parked only moments earlier.
It quickly gathered pace, hurtling across the road, down an embankment and into the County Drive property of 63-year-old Frank Guy and his wife Therese.
From there, it took out a fence, a retaining wall and a garden shed, before crashing through the side of the Guy's master bedroom and pushing their bed from one end of the room to the other.
Mr Guy, who was in the kitchen with his wife at the time, said he realised things could have been much worse when he discovered the couple's bed amongst the wreckage, covered in bricks. Live wires were hanging from the wall.
"It came through the wall where the bedhead sits against the wall, and pushed the brickwork onto the bed," he said.
"We were just really happy it was 7pm and not 11pm, when we would have been in there. We would have been a bit sore and sorry today."
Mr Guy said the couple went outside to investigate after hearing an "unusual noise" they initially suspected was a car accident.
They were puzzled when they heard a man yelling 'is everyone alright?' from the back of the house.
"[Then we] saw the truck in the house," Mr Guy said. "We didn't expect anything like that."
Fire and Rescue Superintendent Paul Johnstone said crews spent about four hours at the scene, using “acro props” to shore up the corner of the house that caved in. “Then once the house was stabilised the vehicle was towed away,” he said.
Roads and Maritime Services heavy vehicle inspectors also attended and a spokeswoman said they would be continuing investigations this week to determine whether the vehicle met all appropriate safety standards.
The wall and roof of the house, where the couple has lived for about 16 years, will need to be rebuilt.
But Mr Guy was most upset about the destruction of his beloved self-propelled lawn mower.
'It's taken me a lot of years to get one of those," he said ruefully.
