A year ago today, Caroline Micallef lost her wedding ring.

She did not misplace it -it was one of the things that remained in her home when it suddenly collapsed in the dark of the night.

Caroline had lived in the apartment for decades and the incident instantly displaced her, her husband Winston and another three neighbouring families.

"We count ourselves lucky to be alive, we got out with seconds to spare before it came crashing down," Caroline told Times of Malta. 

Caroline and Winston Micallef with their dog Ricky on the night of the collapse

The collapse of the Micallefs' home was just the first in a series of buildings adjacent to construction sites that came crashing down throughout the summer. 

In June, another Guardamangia residence collapsed, and just a week before, a collapse in Mellieħa saw the dramatic rescue of Maggie Smith dangling from the remains of her destroyed home. 

Smith passed away just two months later on August 28. 

It was Caroline who, upon hearing strange noises in the dead of night, woke her husband and knocked on her neighbours doors until all of them were out on the street. 

Last month, 54-year old Miriam Pace was not as lucky when she lost her life after the Ħamrun home where she had raised her family collapsed, trapping her under the rubble. 

"They have learned nothing. It had to come to the point where somebody had to die for action to be taken," Caroline said. 

The collapse has left Caroline and her husband not only with profound psychological scars, but struggling to adapt to live without the most basic of their belongings and facing an uphill battle to regain what was once theirs. 

"A year later we're in a situation where their development has overshadowed what was left of our homes, while we are unable to find any certainty of whether we'll be able to sleep soundly under our own roofs again," she said. 

"We weren't wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but we didn't want for anything. They took all of that away from us in the blink of an eye. Not just our things, but our memories and the life we built there." 

"Meanwhile they sleep soundly in their mansions and yachts while we have to get on with our lives with the burden of this trauma that we didn't ask for. We are living miserable, anxious and broken lives." 

The remains of the Guardamangia hill apartment block have been gutted and the doorways boarded up

The return to normality has been a long road with no end in sight for the residents of the apartment block. 

A magisterial inquiry into the collapse was never launched, despite an inquiry  into a collapse just a stone's throw away in Mimosa street.

Residents are also completely in the dark on police investigations into the matter and have been largely left floundering by authorities in their quest for justice from developers and insurance agencies. 

They are insisting with developers that the block be demolished and rebuilt due to it's current instability, however the developers do not share this view, and are pushing to rebuild the damaged part of the collapsed block, Caroline added.

"We're at a standstill because we cannot come to an agreement on this."

"I think it's common sense that the rest of the building was impacted by it. I'm not telling them to give me a villa - I just want to have something equitable to what we had before." 

"It's not unreasonable to demand safety. I don't want to live the rest of my life in fear in my own home."