1&2: Tecoma father Simon Rodger and his two children were lucky to escape from their home without injury when a car ploughed into their roof.
By Casey Neill
Simon Rodger and his children Finn, 10, and Siobhan, 13, escaped without injury but their home could be beyond repair.
‘But I don’t care about the house. My major upset is that someone has died,’ Mr Rodger said.
Emergency services were called to the Burwood Highway home near Sophia Grove about 1.30am Saturday.
Police believe the Upper Ferntree Gully woman was driving along the highway towards Upwey when she tried to overtake another vehicle, lost control, crossed to the wrong side of the road, drove up an embankment and became airborne.
The car rolled in the air and landed upside down in the roof of Mr Rodger’s home.
Debris from the collision impaled the woman and she died at the scene.
Mr Rodger was asleep in his attic bedroom while Finn and Siobhan slept downstairs.
‘We woke up to the sound of crashing and breaking timber and a huge impact on the house,’ Mr Rodger said.
‘As I came downstairs I saw the front of the lounge had caved in and called for the kids.’
‘My daughter was fine. My son was trapped in his bedroom.’
Mr Rodger broke through a jammed door between Siobhan and Finn’s rooms to free his son, took the pair into the backyard and turned his attention to the car.
The 44-year-old and his neighbours extinguished a fire that had sparked beneath it and tried to help the injured driver.
‘Just trying to get towels and things like that, blankets up to her to try to stop the bleeding and just try to stabilise her,’ he said.
Mr Rodger said his children were ‘very calm, very collected.’
‘They were absolute towers of strength,’ he said.
The family has lived in the house for the past three years.
‘The stumps have been snapped and pushed in. The walls have been cracked and pushed in,’ Mr Rodger said.
‘The floor has separated in areas. The house is actually bowing in the bottom and I’ve got cracks all the way down to the back of the house.’
They have moved out and are waiting to find out if the house can be saved.
‘The house at the moment is unsafe. You can’t actually live in it,’ Mr Rodger said.
‘The irony is, just during the week I received a building permit to do an extension out the back.’
Mr Rodger’s wife, Tara, is currently overseas. ‘There’s nothing she can do to help, so she may as well stay where she is,’ she said.
‘Her main concern was obviously for the safety of the children, and grief at the loss of the driver.’
Mr Rodger has seen a few cars ‘lose it racing around the corner’.
‘But nothing too serious and certainly nothing of this nature,’ he said.
‘All I can say is given the position of the car and the distance in, presumably there was quite a bit of momentum involved.’
‘Speed has been a factor here. If there’s anything, if people can take a message away from here, speed does kill,’ he said.
Belgrave Fire Brigade captain Phil Keep pleaded with drivers to take care.
‘It’s probably the worst accident I’ve seen as far as cars going into houses,’ he said.
‘We had to get a heavy haulage crane truck to get the car off the roof before we could get the driver out.’
