Dumbfounded residents gathered at the foot of Gwardamanġa hill on Saturday, watching as the rest of the unsafe building they once lived in was destroyed.
“We are still in shock at what happened,” one of the residents told The Sunday Times of Malta.
The seven residents of the apartment block were slowly recovering belongings from their apartments after being forced to evacuate with nothing but the clothes on their back.
Part of the building collapsed late on Wednesday evening, in an incident which outraged the country and raised concerns over the dangers that may sometimes be posed by development works. Residents, however, were now less concerned about losing their home and simply thankful they made it out alive.
Had the incident happened during the day, a lot of people would have been injured
Workers were on Saturday on site to tear down what little remained of the collapsed building, since it was all deemed unsafe.
“Had the incident happened during the day, a lot of people would have been injured, since the site also has a driving theory testing centre underneath the apartments,” one resident pointed out.
The corner wall of the three-storey block came crashing down around 10.40pm, with bricks and concrete rubble spilling onto the road and into a construction site next door.
The seven people living in the block of apartments are now living in flats provided by the contractors.
Publicly available information indicates the site is owned by APD Properties Limited. Developers on the site on Saturday insisted they had done nothing wrong and that it was all “an unfortunate incident”. There was nothing they could have done to prevent it from happening, representatives of the developers said.
Residents, however, have said they had noticed cracks on the wall for some time.
The development had been going on intermittently, at least since 2017, with demolition and excavation works being finalised prior to May 2018. It is not yet known what caused the sudden collapse.
On Saturday, the environment NGO Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar highlighted the need for authorities to immediately rein in the issuance of building permits and enact long-overdue reforms to stamp out malpractice and restrain “cowboy developers”.
The Planning Authority’s “political masters” have blocked any form of planning, while the Building Regulations Office and Occupational Health and Safety Authority lack the staff and motivation to manage this tenfold workload increase and ensure developers work within regulations, the NGO said.