Tamara Greene was sitting in her front room watching television Sunday evening, June 9, 2024, when the sound of screeching tires drew Greene to the window. She watched a white pickup truck veer down Fifth Avenue and leave the road at the side of her yard. Suddenly, a crash shuddered through her home.
The truck had careened across the yard and hit a chainlink fence surrounding the house before hitting the house itself.
"I could hear the tires. I pulled down the blinds and he hit the side of my house; it was that quick," said Greene.
"Normally the kids are running around outside. It was windy so everyone came in." Her son had been playing in his bedroom when the truck hit the house. No one was injured inside the house.
The force of the collision outside sent Greene's belongings flying across her foyer, and the door frame is broken. Her recycling and garbage bins went flying and there are bricks missing from the front of the house.
Two families live in the house and both use the front entrance, Greene said. Power was cut to the area of the house where the collision happened, but the families did not have to vacate the house, Port Alberni Fire Dept. Capt. Scott Burrows said.
Burrows and other firefighters examined the interior of the lower floor where Greene is a renter, checking systems like natural gas and electrical that might have been compromised.
Port Alberni RCMP were on scene, and BC EHS ambulance drove away from the scene without its lights. Greene said there were two people in the pickup truck. No information on the driver or cause of the collision were available.
The Fifth Avenue incident was the second time emergency personnel responded to a vehicle striking a building on Sunday. The fire department's day shift was called to Westcoast Home Hardware around 10:20 a.m. after a four-door hatchback hit the side of the store near the front entrance to The Brick. The vehicle was towed away on a flatdeck truck.
No other details were immediately available.