Jeep slams into house
CLEARFIELD TWP — It was quite the unexpected wake-up call Monday morning for 87-year-old Jane Rhodaberger.
“I heard something, but I didn't know what it was,” said the mother of 13, grandmother of 40 and great-grandmother of 53.
What she heard was hard to comprehend: There was a Jeep in her house, the result of a freak crash shortly after 8 a.m. on the 1200 block of Herman Road.
Rhodaberger was shaken, but she was not hurt. Her daughter, Karen Snyder of Fenelton, who was visiting, apparently suffered minor injuries. She was taken by ambulance to Butler Memorial Hospital to be checked out.
Family members said Snyder was on a couch in the living room when the Jeep Wrangler slammed into the brick house.
The 22-year-old driver also apparently escaped with minor injuries. He told the Butler Eagle that he was driving to work at nearby Summit Academy.
State police are investigating. An accident report was not immediately available.
The driver was westbound on Herman Road when he lost control of his Jeep. He didn't think he was going all that fast.
“It was just accidental,” he said. “I started slipping and tried to get it back on the road, but there was no going back.”
He didn't want to talk about his injuries.
“I'm not worried about myself,” he said. “I'm just worried about them, the people inside the house. I hope everyone is alright.”
The road was wet from a light morning rain. Residents also pointed out there is a dangerous “dip” in the road where the driver had traveled just before the wreck.They blamed the dip for other traffic accidents over the years.Charlie Neupert was drinking coffee at the kitchen table in his house across the road when he heard the crash.“I heard the noise and looked out,” he said. “I seen the (driver). He was out of the Jeep and waving his hands in the air.”Troy Rhodaberger, another of Jane's children, was at work. He and sister Amy Rhodaberger own the house and also live there.Troy didn't know what happened until another one of his sisters called him on the phone.“She said, 'You're not going to believe this but there's a car in your house,'” Troy recalled. She was right. He was in disbelief.“I was trying to figure out how that was possible,” he said. He wasted little time driving home to see for himself.He was stunned to find the Jeep had traveled onto the front porch and into the house.“Most of the damage was to the corner of the house where the front door is,” he said. “The floor looks OK. It's just the wall. The back half of the house is fine.”The load-bearing wall “is pretty much gone,” said Rob McLafferty, chief of the Herman Volunteer Fire Company.Rhodaberger's daughters, Janet Stephenson and Tracy Snyder, later helped their mother down the steps of the back porch.McLafferty and another firefighter also assisted, giving the elderly woman encouraging words as she eased herself down.
Once off the steps, she grabbed a wheeled-walker and inched herself to an awaiting vehicle belonging to one of her daughters.She will have no trouble finding a place to stay, Troy acknowledged, until the house is inspected and a decision about repairs is made. Of her 40 grandchildren, only two live out of state.Troy said the rest live in Western Pennsylvania.The Southern Butler County Technical Rescue Team, which specializes in building collapse and trench rescue, was called in to help.The team, comprised of members of fire departments in Middlesex and Penn townships and Saxonburg, shored up the house to prevent its collapse and to eventually allow a tow truck to move in and safely extract the embedded Jeep.The extent of the damage was not immediately known. Troy is hoping for the best. He grew up in the five-bedroom house that was built in 1960.He and his four brothers, he remembered, shared one bedroom. His eight sisters had a little more room, sharing three bedrooms between them.“There are a lot of good memories in that house,” Troy said.
