A SENSATION

Hokitika Guardian, 6 September 1939, Page 6

A SENSATION

BUS CRASHES INTO STORE.

(Per Press Association —Copyright)

CHRISTCHURCH, Sept. 6

Swerving across the roadway, alter 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 b v 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 flying glass and smashed in metal work. The bus struck the wooden wall at a slight angle,'and crashed through as if it were matchwoodj the nose disappearing into the storeroom 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 packing cases and saoks, collapsed shelves, cracked ceilings, a telescoped doorway and innumerable broken packets and tins of groceries, all seeping amongst the wreckage of several bottles of kerosene, combined to make the scene chaotic.