Unlucky location - times two

Two close calls are too many, said Bayside resident Vicky Manolatos, explaining that a car nearly crashed into her house for the second time in four months.
“It was meant for my house,” 42-year-old Manolatos said. “A guy was working in the front of my house, so I guess the car swerved and went into her [a neighbor’s] house.”
On Tuesday, May 1, the workers had been fixing up Manolatos’ trashed garden from the last crash when a Jeep Cherokee barreled into the home of Manolatos neighbor on 23rd Road and 215th Street - the two homes are attached.
“This is the second time in four months. I feel like moving out of my house. I want to sell and just go,” Manolatos said, adding that she is too fearsome to sit in the downstairs, in case another vehicle comes plowing through.
Because her home sits on a sharp curve, drivers rarely slow to the 15 miles per hour as advised, Manolatos said.
“They come at 60 and 70 miles per hour. They don’t brake. They come so fast,” she said. “Thank God, my nephew and my children were not killed.”
A day before the latest wreck, Manolatos had been playing with her 16-month-old nephew, Gianni, in the front lawn, where she often walks with the baby in a stroller.
“Last time it missed me and my daughter by minutes,” she said. Manolatos and her 18-year-old daughter, Effie, had just gone inside the house on December 2, 2006 when they heard an explosion and pieces of the closet went flying.
“I thought it was a bomb with the flare and the smoke, the way the debris came next to us. I was in shock. I called 9-1-1 and said it was a bomb, but instead it was a $90,000 BMW,” she said.
Luckily, she said, no one was seriously hurt
Four months later, the Manolatos’ closet remains structurally damaged, and as of Wednesday, May 2, the family and their neighbors, the Damanises, had no electricity or gas because service was shut off after the most recent crash. Manolatos had a generator hooked up so that the family could have temporary power.
“We have the baby here. We need electricity. We need to cook. They’ve got to go to school and we’ve got to go to work,” she said.
Manolatos said that she has stopped repairs to her own house, and doesn’t know if it’s worth fixing the rest of the house - if completed, the repairs will have cost her family between $50,000 and $60,000.
Her neighbors, she guessed, must have about $80,000 worth of damage to their home.