Mower blade cuts through Unity home
Had it not been for a telephone call, Katie Schildkamp might have been in the path of a lethal piece of metal.
The 20-year-old was on the way into the kitchen when an explosive noise shattered the morning peace at the Schildkamp home in the Charter Oak section of Unity.
Her father, Joe Schildkamp, first checked on the well-being of his daughter, who was fine. Then Schildkamp rushed to the first-floor kitchen where he tried to peer through a cloud of smoke to see what caused the commotion around 8:30 a.m. Thursday.
"It was the most hellacious sound I've ever heard ... I never experienced anything like it. I immediately telephoned 911, and they told me to get out of the house," Schildkamp said.
It wasn't until several minutes after "the smoke" cleared that a firefighter from nearby Dryridge Volunteer Fire Department figured out what caused the freak explosion: a 6-inch-long piece of cracked mower blade. The firefighter found the steel piece on the kitchen floor.
But not before the blade careened through an exterior wall, through an interior wall, through the long wooden back of a dining room chair, through a blender, through a coffeemaker, and through other appliances then finally slammed into an electric receptacle, shattering the exterior cover.
"Thank goodness my daughter, who was headed to the kitchen minutes before, got a telephone call and had to go back into her bedroom or she would have been in the middle of it," Schildkamp said.
Schildkamp said it took a few minutes for authorities to figure out the source of the damaged blade: a township mower that was trimming in the neighborhood about 200 to 300 feet from the house when the accident occurred.
"I just think people should realize the danger when they see these mowers near their houses. I know I never knew how dangerous it could be," Schildkamp said.
Schildkamp said the township acted immediately upon learning of the accident and will cover the damage, which could amount "to a few thousand dollars" because of the holes in the walls and damage to wallpaper, paint, rugs, the chair and the appliances.
Unity Supervisor Chairman Mike O'Barto blamed the damage on "a freak accident."
"I've been here 15 years and a lot of other workers have been here longer and none of us have ever heard of anything like this ... a cracked blade flying up instead of into the ground," O'Barto said.
"Thank God nobody was hurt, and I can say the driver of the mower was really upset when he learned what happened. No one even knew the blade cracked off until later," he said. "We acted immediately after we learned about it."
