As Montgomery County maintenance and operations officials worked to prevent the ceiling from caving in at the Potomac Center Monday, an emergency call came in over their radios: Leland Community Center, day-care section, toilet overflowing.
The workers had bigger concerns.
At 8:45 Monday morning, a late-model BMW struck an exterior wall of the community center head-on, passing through the cinder blocks and halfway into an empty meeting room.
The driver of the car, Shirley Ann Fuscoe, 72, of Lamplighter Drive, and her passenger, Laura Edson, were not injured.
The crash left a gaping hole in the Community Center wall, with a large metal window frame bent back.
Fuscoe and Edson were arriving to attend a 9 a.m. aerobics class at the Center. Fuscoe pulled into a parking space, which was about 50 feet away from the wall her car eventually struck and elevated slightly above the level of the Community Center.
Both women indicated that nothing seemed to be wrong and that the car had either stopped or nearly stopped but not yet been put into park, when it took off toward the wall.
“I was just parking to go to the aerobics class. All of a sudden, the car just lurched forward like that. I don’t even know what happened,” Fuscoe said. “I didn’t think I had my foot on the pedal. But you know things happened so fast, I wasn’t sure what happened.”
The car passed over a small curb marking the end of the parking space, down a sloped grass divide, across a lower parking area, over another curb, and into the wall.
Both of the car’s air bags deployed. But realizing that they were OK, Fuscoe and Edson got out through the passenger-side door.
“The woman came up to me, calm as can be, and told me, ‘I just drove my car into your building, and I thought you should know,’” said Linda Barlock, director of the Community Center. People in the exercise room adjacent to the meeting room the BMW struck heard a boom, but others in the Community Center were unaware that anything had happened.
“It was a brief scary moment zooming across there and hitting it,” Fuscoe said, but otherwise she and her passenger were not flustered.
“Neither one of us were upset,” Edson said. “It just happened so fast. It was unavoidable. Thank goodness no one was in the way.”
If the accident had occurred just 45 minutes later, the consequences might have been tragic. A 9:30 a.m. Mom and Tot class was scheduled for the meeting room.
“If it had happened later, it would have been a disaster, a tragedy. You can see how those bricks fly across the room,” Barlock said.
“That would be just horrible. I can’t imagine anything worse than that,” Fuscoe said, referring to the possibility of the room being occupied. “Its fortunate nobody was hurt. That’s amazing. Everything else can be repaired,” she said.
Montgomery County Police and Fire and Rescue units responded to the scene. Fuscoe and Edson were examined but declined to be taken to the hospital and had no visible injuries.
No charges have been filed against Fuscoe .
Teams from the fire marshal’s office and building inspector’s office also responded to assess the structural damage.
About 10 maintenance and operations workers were called in from around the county and received instructions from the building inspector’s office before working to secure the room and prepare to have the car removed.
The workers shored up the ceiling with sturdy 6-inch-by-6-inch beams, disconnected wiring and plumbing, and tied back a corner of the bent window frame so that it would not catch on the car as it was being pulled out.
None of the workers had ever had a call like this one before.
”Its always little bump-ups, little things happening, but that one’s a little more than the norm there,” said Louis Baker, a supervisor at the scene.
Another worker said a normal “emergency” call would be for shattered windows at a county liquor store.
The car was pulled out of the building at approximately 12:30 p.m. A small section of cinder blocks overhanging the hood of the car collapsed as it was pulled out, but the blocks were hanging precariously and probably would have been removed even if they had not fallen.
The maintenance and facilities workers prepared to cover the hole with plywood. The debris was left in place pending the arrival of insurance inspectors, who were expected later in the day.
“I thought I’d seen just about everything that could happen in this building,” Barlock said.
Fuscoe was apologetic. “I like the Community Center. I didn’t mean to wreck it. I like it a lot. They couldn’t have been nicer,” she said.
Both Fuscoe and Edson said they planned to attend the next meeting of their aerobics class Wednesday.