A family have been forced to live with a car embedded in their kitchen for almost a week.
Josephine and Tony Poole, of Garden Close, Royston, were on holiday in the Canary Islands when a neighbour reversed her car into their bungalow on Saturday at around 2pm.
Their eldest son, Nick, who was looking after the house and their cats while his parents were on holiday, had just left the kitchen having made a sausage sandwich moments before the accident happened.
Mrs Poole, 60, said: “Nick walked into the lounge, took a bite of his sandwich and heard a loud crash. He had just been at the oven which the car hit moments later. He said the noise was so loud it sounded like a plane was landing on the place. He opened the kitchen door and there was a car parked in there.”
The car was a red Citroen C5 driven by an elderly female neighbour, who had accidentally reversed into the wall at around 30mph, crashing into the kitchen’s main water and gas supplies.
Mrs Poole said: “Nick saw our neighbour still sitting in the car, and shouted to her husband across the street to help get her out of the car, as there was gas leaking and the kitchen was flooded. She was badly shaken, and has some bruising, and obviously she feels terrible about what has happened.
“We had no signal as we were on holiday, but we got a text through at some point saying that our neighbour had parked her car in our kitchen. There was nothing we could do as we could not see the extent of the damage.
“My son, Andrew, spent 17 hours on the phone over three days sorting everything out. And an insurance company only came out to see us today (Thursday) after six days. We understand we are not the only people who have had an accident recently, but it’s just that the car is still here in our kitchen!”
“We can’t move the car until the engineer tells us it is safe as the walls or the roof could fall down. It will be about two weeks before anything can happen and we get the car out, until then all we can do is wait. We have no heating or hot water, but we can’t leave the house for security reasons.”
The Pooles only had their kitchen renovated in December of last year, having lived in their home for six months.
The street was evacuated for around three hours while the emergency services secured the property.
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