A Newfoundland and Labrador woman is lucky to be alive after hurricane-force winds picked up a canoe from a neighbour’s yard and slammed it into the side of her house hard enough to break through the wall.
The boat crashed through the woman’s bedroom, smashing to pieces the headboard on the bed where she was resting.
“(It) just hit the side of the house. Came in right through the siding,” Theresa Power of Freshwater, Placentia Bay told CTV News Channel on Sunday.
The whole thing happened so fast that Power says she didn’t even notice the trespassing green vessel until her husband Clifford burst into the bedroom after hearing the impact.
“He said the headboard was cracked. When I looked, I said ‘Oh my goodness, it almost hit me in the head.”
The near-death experience took place as winds of up to 180 kilometres per hour tore through the region on Saturday. Environment Canada said the storm was strongest to hit the province in more than a decade.
Power said she had never seen the green canoe before it entered her bedroom. She figures it belongs to a neighbour who forgot to tie it down before the storm hit.
Power said insurance officials will arrive on Monday to assess her badly damaged home. Luckily she has the shattered headboard and the surprisingly intact canoe as evidence.
“If only for the headboard, I would have been hit in the head with the boat,” she said.
