May 8, 2008

Car crashes into apartment

Six seniors displaced in freak accident

By Michael Manekin / Bay Area News Group

Six displaced residents of a senior citizen apartment complex are temporarily living in an area hotel after a freak accident Tuesday night that sent a sport utility vehicle plowing into their building, authorities reported.

The BMW crashed into Sterling Court, a 150-unit apartment building at El Camino Real, Peninsula Avenue and Park Road at about 8 p.m. Tuesday, said San Mateo Fire Department Battalion Chief Mike Borean.

The vehicle hit another car before careening into the building, plowing through two walls and coming to rest beside a toilet in the bathroom of a ground floor apartment

"I know the guy who lives there, Jerry, and he said if he had been on the john at the time, he probably wouldn't be here today," said Bernie, an 88-year-old resident of the building who declined to give his last name.

"We can't understand how it happened or why it happened," said another resident of the self-described "community for seniors" who identified himself as Jim.

Police are investigating the cause of the accident, Borean said. Firefighters were forced to extract the driver of the BMW with the Jaws of Life, but he suffered only minor injuries, Borean said. The driver of the other vehicle was uninjured, he said.

None of the residents was injured, although the severity of the accident made one part of the building temporarily uninhabitable, including the ground floor apartment where the BMW crashed and the three apartments above, said Charlyne Smith, director of residential affairs at Sterling Court.

The six people in the evacuated apartments are staying indefinitely in an area hotel, Smith said. The people who live in the ground floor apartment - "a couple in their 80s" - were in the living room at the time of the crash, Smith said.

"They're OK; they came here earlier (Wednesday) to pick up some things," Smith said.

The three-way intersection in front of the apartment building has produced several accidents in recent years that have affected either the building or its property, Smith said.

"This is kind of a hazardous corner," she said.