Vehicle crashes through Nepean garage; family displaced

Ottawa fire’s structural collapse team responded after a vehicle was driven through the wall of a single-family home on Wednesday afternoon.

It happened just after 12 p.m. in the 100 block of Locheland Crescent in Nepean.

Ottawa police asked firefighters to respond and they arrived four minutes after being dispatched. Two people were out of the SUV when fire crews arrived. Crews said the integrity of the structure was compromised after the vehicle was driven through the garage door and through one of the walls.

When responding to these kinds of incidents, firefighters bring a pod of lumber and tools to shore up the areas of the home that are compromised. This means firefighters need to cut and measure wood beams to rebuild the structure. Once the walls were stabilized, a winch was used to remove the SUV at 2:34 p.m.

A city building inspector responding to the scene said occupants of the home will be displaced.

This incident is not the first, Nick DeFazio, Media Relations Officer, told CityNews that the structural integrity team has responded to many similar incidents in the nation’s capital.

“There has been a significant amount in the last six months,” he said.

According to data from firefighters, so far this year there have been three incidents of a vehicle going through a residential structure and six going through a business/storefront.

According to DeFazio, garages seem to be the most common incident but people driving into storefronts also happen.

Structural responses are more time-consuming, he explained, and require a lot of training from the team.

“A lot of people don’t know we have a structural collapse team, this team is always training and ready to respond,” he said.

They are trained on many different scenarios including vehicles going through garage walls.

Once crews finished stabilizing the structure, the scene was left in the hands of Ottawa police.