Winds blow huge gantry onto car

A young Bellewstown man and his girlfriend narrowly escaped death when a huge overhead motorway gantry fell onto their car on the Naas Road in Dublin at the height of the storm which battered the country on Saturday. Accountant Richard Howard (33) and his Kerry-born girlfriend Emer Dennehy (33) were travelling on the Naas Road outbound when the incident happened at 3.05pm. Just as they were leaving the Naas Road at the Ballymount Junction, Richard saw a bollard blow onto the road in front of him. He stopped, went back and removed it to the side. 'I got back into the car and drove off. The next thing, I heard an almighty bang and I thought the back axle of the car had come off - it was just that loud,' he recalled. The massive structure fell on the rear of the VW Golf, crushing the roof and pulverising the rear end of the vehicle. 'I looked back and the boot had been ripped off. There was a fair bit of shock all round. I was driving at 40mph. I"d say there were milliseconds of time between the front of the car and the back. If we had been hit at the front, we"d have had it, it would have been a completely different story,' he said. Aided by other motorists and Gardai from Terenure Garda Station, and in particular Garda Darragh Gaskin, the shocked couple struggled from their wrecked car and then had to battle to keep their feet in the storm-force winds. Emer, an archaeologist who lives in Kildare, already had a broken foot from a simple accident which happened on 5th December and was in plaster. 'Emer would normally sit in the back of the car with her foot raised up to rest it, but on Saturday she decided to travel in the front. It was just as well she did or we would have been in real trouble. As it is, her foot was sore again after the accident and she was going to the hospital for a check-up. She was upset and shaken up after the accident,' said Richard. Emer was due to have her plaster taken off on Monday of this week but the couple were unsure whether this would now take place. They are without Richard"s car which was a write-off when the overhead gantry collapsed onto it.