Woman rescued after truck hits building

Pam Stimatz was rinsing her coffee mug Friday morning in the kitchen of the Ronkonkoma building where she works when she heard -- and felt -- the building "crumbling around me."

A pile of steel, concrete and construction debris pushed against her, she said, forcing her into a space about 3 feet by 3 feet.

A truck had slammed into the building, at 931 S. Second St., and when rescue workers arrived they had to rip down an exterior wall to free Stimatz.

Remarkably, she was uninjured.

"I probably had about two [more] feet and I would have been under the truck," she said. "I was very lucky today."

Stimatz, 57, of Holbrook, an employee at Impala Press, said she was frightened.

"I didn't know what hit the building," she said. When she heard rescue workers outside, "I just started yelling, 'Help, help, help.' "

A spokeswoman for All Island Recycling and Rubbish Removal, the Ronkonkoma company that owns the truck, said the driver was not injured. The truck was carrying an unfilled trash container, witnesses said.

Suffolk County police said the accident happened at 8:30 a.m., but had no other details.

Workers hammered away at the wall of a small bathroom near the kitchen to free her, Stimatz said. As they banged away, sometimes sending debris in her direction, she said she shielded herself with a wood plank. She said it took about 10 minutes before workers freed her.

After being treated by medical technicians in the back of an ambulance, Stimatz said she was fine -- "just a few scrapes here and there."