A man narrowly escaped a fatal accident after a giant concrete slab fell 100 ft from a high-rise residential building into his car, destroying it in the process.
Alexander, 27, was cleaning ice from his car windscreen in Vladivostok, Russia when he looked up to see rubble and chunks of snow falling from his high-rise A split second later, Alexander moved out of the way just in time to see the concrete plummeting towards his car, rending the Nissan X-Trail in two.
The terrifying footage was captured on CCTV:
The concrete slab had fallen from the ninth floor of the side of the high-rise on Neibuta Street. It appears to be part of a balcony, with one estimate claiming the slab to be 8ft by 4ft.
Thankfully, Alexander was not in the car at the time of the incident as he had to clear the thick ice and snow from his windscreen. His wife, Darya Ponomarenko-Zhuk, 26, also narrowly avoided the near-fatal event by going inside the building to get hot water to melt the ice. Alexander said it was “lucky” that his five-year-old daughter was not sitting in the back seat.
How did the concrete slab fall in the first place, you may ask? Over the past week, Vladivostok has experienced a brutal snowstorm, which caused power cuts, transport chaos, and school closures. In the port city, winds brought down frozen power-lines and trees. The night before Alexander’s car was destroyed, Vladivostok faced “ice rain”, the most likely culprit for the concrete slab falling from the high-rise. The sub-zero temperatures weakened the slab, with the extreme icy weather finally detaching it from the building altogether, sending it plummeting towards Alexander and his car. A concrete slab also fell from another building in the same street, smashing a Toyota Passo, according to reports.
Thanks to social media, the video has predictably made Alexander famous in Vladivostok for his near escape from death. His response? “Better my car was intact.”
To see more harrowing CCTV footage, click here to watch the video captured of a giant sinkhole swallowing 21 cars in China, after a torrential downpour.
