AN ARCHITECT was last night assessing the likelihood of successfully removing the wreckage of lorry which had crashed into a cottage without demolishing it.
Businesswoman Ms Fidelma McAllister was in shock yesterday after a 40-foot articulated lorry crashed into the side of her 290-year-old-cottage, narrowly missing her and her partner by a matter of feet. The driver of the lorry was being treated for shock at the Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda after the accident, which happened at about 5.40 a.m.
Ms McAllister and Mr Pat Finnegan had been visiting friends until about 3.30 am. and were awoken by their house alarm. They discovered that three rooms in their home near Delvin Bridge, Balbriggan, had been demolished. The lorry apparently went out of control as At travelled towards Dublin and careered across the road.
It appears the cab of the vehicle hit a tree beside the house, uprooting the tree and forcing the cab to turn away from the body of the house. The cab ended up in the back garden and a portion of the 40-foot container crashed into the side of the house, which is subject to a preservation order. Yesterday afternoon an architect was assessing what further structural damage could be caused by removing the vehicle.
The cottage front age is less than 30 feet long. The couple added a large conservatory to the side, which escaped the impact. Yesterday they were coming to terms with the possibility that this could also be damaged.
"Only the lorry turned sideways, it was the end of us ... when they take the truck away the rest of the cottage will come in," said Ms McAllister. The couple bought the house nearly three years ago and spent what she described as "a considerable sum" making it their "dream home".
Among the rooms destroyed was the spare bedroom. "Anybody staying with us would be dead or we would if we had been sitting up". The impact of the lorry set off the security system and the sound of the alarm woke the couple.
The vehicle may have gone out of control due to black ice. In recent years residents in the Balbriggan and Gormanston areas have been campaigning for safety measures along a 3 km stretch of road which has seen 17 deaths in the past five years.