A car slammed into a house at 17 Van Buren Ave. Thursday morning, shifting it off its foundation and leaving the female driver with chest injuries.
A male toddler in the car strapped into a car seat was also injured.
According to police, the woman was driving northbound on Van Buren Avenue and started turning left onto Maple Avenue when her car mounted a sidewalk, knocked a front porch off of a house at 13 Van Buren Ave., and then continued forward into the house next door.
"She said she may have passed out" as a possible cause of the accident, said Sgt. James Belmont.
Belmont said the driver had chest injuries that he didn't think were life threatening. The boy in the car was also injured, he said, but his injuries didn't appear serious.
Her car, a Pontiac Aztec, crashed into the southeast corner of the two-family house, gouging a hole into it that opened onto the basement. The crash cut a gas line and a water line.
The accident was reported at 10:37 a.m.
Norwalk Housing Department director William Ireland examined the house and then posted it unfit for occupancy.
Yankee Gas employees had difficulty closing the valve of the gas line to the house, and the odor of natural gas eminating from the basement could be smelled a distance away.
Deputy Fire Chief Edward Prescott said Ireland found the house at shifted on its foundation. He said the house's wiring may have been damaged, so a Connecticut Light & Power lineman disconnected its electric service.
Prescott said the soil beneath the house's front yard was permeated with gas, so Yankee Gas employees drilled a whole into the lawn and injected it with pressurized air.
There were at least five people in the house at the time of the crash, none of whom were injured.
The house's owner, Gil Taborda, said he wasn't greatly concerned about what happened to his property. "My main concern is the people," Taborda said. "The passengers in the car, that's the thing."
Taborda said he's owned the house for at least 25 years. He said three people reside on the first floor and three on the second.
The accident required closing Van Buren Avenue between Maple and Bedford avenues.
