BIG MOTOR 'BUS

Grey River Argus, 7 September 1939, Page 4

BIG MOTOR 'BUS

Scares People in Shop CRASH IN CHRISTCHURCH. CHRISTCHURCH, September 6. Swerving across the roadway after striking a light delivery van at a corner, shortly before seven o’clock this morning, a six-ton Diesel bus, belonging to the Christchurch Tramway Board, leapt on to the footpath and smashed through the side, wall of a grocer’s shop, owned by C. Schumacher. So resounding was the crash that the occupants of the building, who were at breakfast “thought they were being bombed by German aeroplanes.” There were no passengers in the bus, but the driver had a miraculous escape by being thrown on to the floor, where he escaped the flying glass and smashed-in metal work. The bus struck the wooden wall at a sight angle and crashed through li as if it were matchwood, its nose disappearing into a store-room at the rear of the shop, with jagged, splintered ends of wood encircling it. Saws and axes had to be used to free the bus . Inside the shop, shattered ends of timber, displaced packingcases and sacks, collapsed shelves cracked ceilings, a telescoped doorway, and innumerable broken packet t and tins of groceries, all seepin ; amongst the wreckage of severa.' bottles of kerosene, combined to make the scene chaotic.