Pembrokeshire campsite crash: baby saved after car ‘catapulted’ from road

Two people are in a serious condition in hospital and seven others were injured when a car crashed into a campsite in Pembrokeshire on Saturday night.

A Ford Fiesta “veered off the A487 and crossed a ditch into Newgale Campsite” around 10.30pm, said The Telegraph[1]. Mike Harris, the site’s owner, said the car was travelling at “80 or 90mph” along the 30mph road, Sky News[2] reported. 

“It catapulted from the road because of the speed he was going, over the ditch separating the campsite and main road and landed about 100m from where the driver started braking,” Harris continued. The vehicle “turned three full turns” and “rolled through a tent belonging to a family”, he said. 

Harris believes that a baby in the tent was able to “only narrowly escape serious injury” because it was in a cot when the vehicle collided with the structure, said The Telegraph. He said the baby’s “good fortune” was a “miracle”, the BBC[3] reported.

When the vehicle came to a stop, it was “rested on top of three people”, Harris explained, before “campers managed to lift the vehicle” and move it onto its side. 

Two surgeons staying at the campsite quickly “started organising and treating people and were able to give a bit of a handover” to the emergency services, Harris told Wales Online[4]. Six ambulances attended the scene, as well as a Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service crew.

One person was airlifted to University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, while four others were taken to Glangwili Hospital in Carmarthen, and another to Morriston Hospital, Swansea. Dyfed Powys Police said that passengers in the vehicle were among those injured in the incident. 

Police are appealing for information and particularly for dashcam or doorbell camera footage that may have captured the vehicle, which was travelling from the village of Roch. 

References

  1. ^ The Telegraph (www.telegraph.co.uk)
  2. ^ Sky News (news.sky.com)
  3. ^ BBC (www.bbc.co.uk)
  4. ^ Wales Online (www.walesonline.co.uk)