KEY POINTS:
An out-of-control 43-tonne milk tanker sliced through three homes and sent a man flying from his living room.
The tanker clipped the first house, damaging a bedroom, then ploughed through the middle of two neighbouring homes in a Hollywood-like demolition scene at Waipawa in Hawkes Bay.
No one was at home in the first two houses, but a 55-year-old man with a broken ankle was in the third home, watching television in his lounge.
The tanker smashed through the lounge wall, and the impact hurled him through a doorway into the next room, a dining area.
His good leg was fractured in two places, and last night he was in a stable condition in Hastings Hospital.
The tanker driver had a broken nose and cuts to his face and arms.
The double-trailer unit carrying 25,000 litres of milk to Oringi, south of Dannevirke, veered off State Highway 2 at 7.30pm on Saturday
Bruce Oliver was following the the tanker in the 70km/h zone, and said there was no sign of braking before the accident. The driver later told Mr Oliver he had been choking on a lolly.
Mr Oliver watched as the tanker "bulldozed through" the homes.
"It was pushing debris to the side," he said. "There was clouds of dust every house it hit. The kind of thing you'd see on a movie."
The tanker dragged household items with it, and a family photo album from the second home was found inside the third.
The driver, in his mid-to-late 50s, was concerned people had been injured or killed, Mr Oliver said.
Fire fighters searched the homes for any sign of the other occupants.
"It could have been death, that's for sure," said Waipawa deputy fire chief Gordon Annand.
"Where the tanker when through the middle house ... that's where the family would have been sitting watching TV or having tea."
Constable Neil Baker, of Waipawa, said the scene was "unbelievable".
"It's like a bloody warzone , there's just destruction everywhere.
"One house has a hole through the middle of it - it's just gone right through the middle."
Mr Baker said the driver had been interviewed by police.
A Fonterra spokesman said the milk was transferred to another tanker. He understood that not a drop was spilt in the accident. The company is arranging accommodation for affected households.
