UPDATE: Repair work to west home well under way
The family home was damaged when a runaway truck from Mabopane highway rammed through it.
Work to rebuild the Pretoria West house damaged when a truck rammed through it, is well underway.
The Prinsloo family home was destroyed when a runaway truck drove through their Ferdinand Street home in September.
The truck came from the R80 Mabopane highway.
House owner Douw Prinsloo said construction workers started with repair work on the house on Monday last week.
By Wednesday this week, Prinsloo said builders would start rebuilding the walls of the last damaged room.
“The workers are working very quickly,” he said.
“If they keep working at the pace they are working at now, I hope that they will be done before they said they would.”
The foreman on the job Jack Williams from DG & CJ Construction, told Rekord last week, that if all went well, they should be finished by mid-November.
“It all depends on how long the finer work will take,” Prinsloo said.
READ MORE: NEWSFLASH: Two injured after truck drives into Daspoort home
Prinsloo said the family was staying at a rented home in the Moot while waiting for repairs to be done.
He said the family was excited to “finally” move back into their home.
“We are very happy and excited to be back in our home soon and to spend Christmas here,” he said.
Prinsloo said his family have been living in the house for the past 13 years but he remained concerned about speeding motorists on the Mabopane highway.
“On Monday evening, a vehicle caught fire right behind my house exactly on the spot where the truck crashed through my wall,” he said.
“Thankfully, the occupants of the vehicle were unharmed and we were quickly able to grab fire extinguishers to help put out the fire.”
He previously said this was not the first time a vehicle had crashed into their home.
“It happened twice to the previous owners,” he said.
He said he was planning to draw up a petition that a barrier be erected to protect residential homes from accidents on the highway.
Prinsloo previously told Rekord that on the day of the accident, on 3 September, he was just about to lie down on the couch to rest when he heard “tyre screeching noises”.
READ MORE: UPDATE: Repair of west home damaged by truck starts
“At first I thought it was an accident on the highway, but the next moment when I turned around I just saw the truck coming toward our house,” he said.
The driver of the truck was trapped in the wreck for more than an hour before being freed and taken to hospital by helicopter with back and neck injuries.
Prinsloo and some of his workers were the only people at home at the time of the accident.
The workers were in the backyard.
A large part of their home was destroyed in the accident.
He said the living area, lounge, TV room, walk-in closet, bathroom and a spare room with a separate bathroom were destroyed in the crash.
The roof of the house also shifted on impact.
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