A car has crashed into a house in East Auckland this afternoon. The incident took place during a driving lesson, a witness who went to help says.
Police, ambulance and fire crews are at the scene outside a property on Barbarich Drive, in Stonefields, Mt Wellington.
A metal fence and two hedges were flattened by the crash, which has left the house with a broken block wall and two smashed-out window units.
No one was at home when the crash occurred.
A son of the owners, Matt Hall, said his wife arrived to drop off some towels just after the crash.
"There was a car in the lounge and people still inside it."
/arc-anglerfish-syd-prod-nzme.s3.amazonaws.com/public/GENE2J33EFHMHHBFY7MBGI7FYI.png)
"I think they were pretty stunned. The woman who was driving was pretty shaken up."
"I guess the main thing is that nobody was hurt."
Hall understood the woman was a learner driver.
"I think she was doing a three-point turn in the driveway."
He believed she may have been intending to push the brake pedal but instead "hit the gas".
Hall said the building damage looks serious.
"It looks like she's hit the column at the back there. That's structural. It's bent. There'll be some reasonable building work to repair it."
As he was speaking to the Herald, a glazier arrived to get started on making the building secure. Insurance assessors are next on his list.
A resident on the street, Greg Wiggins, told the Herald he heard a loud noise and rushed outside to investigate.
"I put my head around and saw a car had gone through the hedge and into the living room.''
Wiggins ran over to check if everyone was okay.
"I pulled back the curtain - the Holland blinds - and there was the car, sitting in the living room. The front bumper had gone through the opposite wall.
Wiggins said a man was leaning on the car inside the living room by the time he arrived.
An older woman was at the wheel of the car.
A man, identified as a a driving instructor, was later seen walking up and down the street holding his head.
"He was teaching her how to drive. Yeah, back to the depot it is.
"They said they took a wrong turn - yeah, that's pretty obvious.''
Another man, the woman's husband, was also in the vehicle at the time.
Wiggins said emergency services arrived quickly at the scene and they established no one was physically hurt.
However, the woman appeared shaken by the incident and was seen inside an ambulance a short time later.
Another resident, Joanne Whitney, was working at home when and happened to have noticed a maroon car drive past seconds before hearing "an almighty crash".
"I went outside and looked up and down the street and couldn't see any crashed vehcles. Then I saw a woman, who had been doing some gardening, pointing to the house.
"That's when I saw this big gaping hole and realised the car had gone straight through the house.''
It is understood the owners of the house were not there at the time.
A Fire and Emergency spokeswoman confirmed they had been called to the area after reports that a car had gone through a house.
No one was injured and the house itself is thought to be stable, the spokeswoman said.
