OCEAN CITY – It was a tough week for a couple buildings in Ocean City as two were severely damaged after being struck by vehicles in separate incidents over the weekend.
It started last Friday, the Fourth of July, when volunteer firefighters were forced out of their station on 130th Street after a vehicle slammed into the south wall of the building. According to fire department officials, the driver had parked her vehicle in an area just south of the fire station at Montego Bay, and when she attempted to back out, she instead put the car in drive and crashed through the brick wall.
The driver was not injured, nor were any injuries reported in the station, but the building suffered severe damage. There was no damage reported to any fire department equipment although two emergency vehicles were moved to other stations following the collision.
City engineers conducted a thorough inspection of the facility and deemed it safe for occupancy. By Tuesday, workers were repairing the damage to the brick wall on the south side of the building.
While workers were repairing the damaged fire station on Tuesday, other repairs were going on in a different part of town where a similar accident occurred on Monday night.
Shortly after 5 p.m. on July 7, a driver was attempting to park her vehicle in front of the Galaxy 66 restaurant on 66th Street when her foot reportedly slipped off the break of her 2008 Nissan Pathfinder.
The vehicle lunged forward and crashed through the restaurant’s ground-to-roof window just to the right of the building’s front entrance. The driver, identified as Andrea Robling, 31, of Frederick, Md., was not injured in the crash, nor were any injuries reported for restaurant patrons or employees. The crash occurred during the business’s busy happy hour and just before the dinner hour.
On Tuesday morning, a huge sheet of plywood covered the gaping hole in the front of the restaurant before repair crews fixed the damage later that afternoon. Robling was listed at fault in the accident, but no charges have been or will be filed, according to authorities.