Two Treehouse Sports Cafe bartenders narrowly escaped injury tonight after an alleged drunk driver slammed into their cars parked outside of the Merrick bar on Sunrise Highway.  

Bartender Ashley Centineo had just arrived for her 7 p.m. shift while fellow bartender Susan Kempen, of Merrick, was about to head home for the night. That's when a Rockville Centre woman driving a Saturn eastbound on Sunrise Highway sideswiped Centineo's Chevy Lumina, sending the Saturn careening into Kempen's Chevy Impala.

"If either one of us had been in our cars, we would have been creamed," Kempen said.  

The driver of the Saturn, Kelly Booth, 29, who was not injured, was arrested at the scene on charges of driving while intoxicated.  Witnesses said a man who had been following the Saturn from Baldwin had called police after he saw the car swerving along the highway.  

The impact of the crash left Kempen's car on the grass facing the opposite direction in which it had been parked.  

Centineo said she had been in the bar for less than five minutes when she heard someone say, "Call 911."  

"I came out to make sure no one was hurt and I saw my car," said Centineo, of Valley Stream.  "I thought it wasn't that bad. I just saw the wheel bent.  Then I walked to the other side and then I realized that the car was totaled."  

Peter Koenig, a patron in the bar, was the first one to the Saturn after the crash, where he said he found Booth on her cellphone screaming that another car had hit her.  

"We had to pry the doors open to get her out of the backseat," Koenig said.  

While Centineo and Kempen may need to shop for new cars, they said they were lucky, knowing that if the crash had occurred just minutes earlier or later, one of them may not have been around to speak about it.  

"Either one of us could have been killed," Kempen said.