Patrons narrowly escape death as truck ploughs into restaurant
"It all happened in slow motion. We heard the noise and before I knew it, I was running."
WHITE RIVER – More than R200 000’s worth of damage was caused at GumTreez Pub & Grill when a freight truck careered into the boma of the pub on Friday night. It destroyed everything in its path and missed a table of eight patrons by millimetres after the driver had veered off the road.
The truck was carrying empty beer bottles in crates when it approached the traffic circle at Casterbridge Lifestyle Centre. It left a trail of broken bottles and SAB crates in its wake as it ploughed straight across the island in the middle of the circle, into the parking lot and open areas and into the restaurant.
According to Mr Willem Swart of Van Wettens, the driver said he had fallen asleep as he was very tired and wanted to stop in White River to rest. Swart was called to the scene, where clean-up operations commenced at around midnight and continued for more than nine hours.
A shocked and dazed Mr Greg Austin, owner of the establishment, was found inspecting the rubble in the venue’s boma on Saturday morning. “You can’t believe it,” he said, still in shock after experiencing this freak accident and partially relieved by the fact that nobody had been injured. He related what had happened to the paper.
“It was between 22:30 and 23:30 when we suddenly heard a deafening noise resembling that of a train.
“The next minute, people were jumping up from their tables screaming, ‘Move out of the way!’ At that point, guests were still enjoying their drinks. We even had one table with close to 10 people,” Austin said. He added that the truck only came to a halt after it had crashed into an antique truck located behind the pub.
“We don’t know how the vehicle missed the trees. The driver would have died.”
His daughter, Ms Abigail Austin, added, “That the truck missed the guests is a miracle.” She stood on the venue’s wooden deck and witnessed the incident. “It’s crazy. Absolutely crazy. If it had hit a tree it would have killed the driver,” she said.
Ms Megan Palmer was one of eight guests who had been seated at a table which was destroyed in the incident.
“We were having dinner with friends from Mozambique and were finishing our drinks when the roaring noise became louder and louder. It increased to such an extent that my friend Duncan Tarrant-Phillips climbed onto the table in order to look over the boma. “What he saw made him scream a one-word order: ‘run!’ and everyone at the table obliged. It was hectic.”
“It seemed so unreal. A huge truck burst into the boma and drove right through it. It came to a halt on the dirt road that leads to the veterinarian clinic.”
“It all happened in slow motion. We heard the noise and before I knew it, I was running.”
“After it came to a halt, we went back to our seats and picked up our handbags and cellphones. The police, J&M Security and an ambulance were called to the scene and we learnt that nobody had been seriously injured,” Palmer recalled.
Austin and his employees were not stunned for long. GumTreez was open
again on Sunday and maintained it’s regular hours. “It’s business as usual and everything’s back to normal,” he said yesterday.
