Car collides with three-storey building - Dudley

Attingham Drive, Dudley, UK

At 12.19am in the early hours of Friday 22 July we responded to Attingham Drive, Dudley where a car had been in collision with a three-storey block of flats.

Crews from our fire stations in Brierley Hill and Dudley attended, together with members of our Technical Rescue Unit. The first arrived three minutes after being mobilised.

They found one car embedded in a ground-floor flat. The driver, believed be in his early forties, had managed to get himself out of the vehicle. He was assessed by the ambulance service and taken to hospital for further checks.

Everyone who was in the building, which contains six flats, was evacuated as a safety precaution. The residents of all but two flats later returned to their homes, following an assessment of the building by a structural engineer.

Our Technical Rescue Unit used specialist equipment to monitor the building’s structural integrity.

We worked with the police, council and the building’s owner to formulate a plan which involved removal of the vehicle by a recovery firm and shoring up of the building by our crews. We had left the scene by 6am.