On the night of February 3, 1995, a powerful explosion at the then State-owned Malta Drydocks killed nine workers. Claudia Calleja spoke to relatives of the victims and experts involved in the probe of one of Malta’s biggest tragedies.

Twenty five years on, Prof. Alfred Vella is still haunted by the bloody scene he witnessed in Cottonera.

“Particularly poignant was the sight of a dead man, face upwards and with several heavy steel pipes that had landed on top of him: as if this was not enough, a jet of water gushing out  from a broken fire line was cascading incessantly on the man’s body,” Prof. Vella, then a court expert, tells The Sunday Times of Malta.

“It was a cruel and obscene sight: yet we were helpless to stop the water.”

Prof. Vella was surveying the immediate aftermath of the powerful blast on board the vessel which rattled the country.

Nine men lost their lives when the 3,148-tonne Libyan tanker Um el Faroud exploded in Dock 3 at Malta Drydocks. The blast was caused by the ignition of an accumulation of flammable vapour which ignited at about 10.30pm, devastating the mid and bow sections of the 115-metre long vessel.

The victims were Carmelo Callus, 47, of Valletta, George Aquilina, 25, of Qormi, Simon Pisani, 22, of Msida, Simon Mifsud, 27, of Vittoriosa, Mario Hales, 40, of Mqabba, Angelo Sciberras, 52, of Żabbar, George Xuereb, 58, of Qormi, Paul Seguna, 37, of Żebbuġ, and Anthony Vassallo, 30, of Dingli.

Maritime lawyer Ann Fenech received a phone call at about 4am from the vessel’s insurers, asking her to head down to the shipyard. She was appointed to represent the vessel, her crew, owners and its protection and indemnity club.

“I was there by daybreak and I saw the extent of the horror. Back then I was 33 and had a six-month-old baby so I really felt it on a human level. There were victims who had small children… In all my years of experience this is probably the most painful and poignant casualty of all,” she says.

Dr Fenech, who closely witnessed the inquiry into the case unfold, says: “The tragedy was the very high price paid for the failure to implement and observe safety practices and procedures. Management and workers had become complacent and under the mistaken belief – either that everyone should have known what they had to do to avoid disaster – or that ‘nothing would happen.’ The tragedy was a huge eyeopener. Things changed after that day.”

Mark Grech – Health and Safety Manager at the yard, now run by Italian company Palumbo since 2010 – witnessed the change in culture firsthand. He was a third-year trainee back in 1995, when the explosion happened.

I was meant to be on night shift that night. But for some reason the rosters were changed

“Back then there was a completely different mentality about safety at work and it was hard to get the masses to adhere to regulations. After the tragedy, the yard’s health and safety department started enforcing regulations, ensuring workers wore personal protective equipment and organising courses,” says Mr Grech who sombrely adds: “I was meant to be on night shift that night. But for some reason the rosters were changed.”

Mr Grech added that over the years, the shipyards, now run by Palumbo, continued to successfully prioritise health and safety.

What happened?

It emerged that the Um el Faroud, owned by General National Transport Company of Libya, was booked for extensive works inside the Malta Drydocks.

It had been carrying petroleum products for a number of years and was scheduled to have extensive pipework done, works on the manifold, works in the accommodation area, blasting of all its cargo tanks which had over the years absorbed a quantity of petroleum product and which when empty would naturally start to “gas off”.

The vessel had been inside Dock 3 for a few days and the 16 crew members were all on board in the accommodation area of the ship when the explosion occurred.

The inquiry established that the explosion took place inside tank number 3 centre. One of the workers who died was cutting through a valve at the manifold by the extensive pipework located on the deck above the tank. Sparks from the welding made their way into an open butterworth hole (a manhole leading into tank number 3 centre) igniting the flammable vapour in the tank that had not been gas freed prior to the start of the work. The explosion opened the ship like a sardine can.

The maritime inquiry lasted a number of months leading to the publication of the report in January 1996.  The victims’ families started civil action  demanding  compensation until  they  received compensation from the government, on behalf of the Malta Drydocks, during an out-of-court settlement.

Horrific sights

One of the court experts, Prof. Vella, said it was probably the most dangerous, physically difficult and emotionally taxing investigation of them all.

“We were on the stricken ship in semi-darkness trying to understand the scene of the accident when the fires had barely been extinguished,  looking for and mapping the presence of significant objects and human bodies in the empty cargo holds of the tanker, negotiating our way by torchlight underneath piles of partly-collapsed and dangerously perched scaffolding,” he says.

That night, initially questioning whether it was an accident or terrorist attack, the team of experts extended the search beyond the ship itself to tour the inside of the empty basin of the dry dock. Dead bodies were strewn on the ground of the dock.

He recalls the details of that “cruel and obscene sight”. Despite the heart-breaking scene, “we needed to photograph the scene as it was”. Early next morning, the experts were back at the drydocks and spent long hours on site for the next two weeks.

Losing a father

On the night of the explosion Mary Grace Sciberras’ father, Angelo, was not meant to be working. He had swapped shifts with a colleague.

She could not believe that her father, a 51-year-old chargeman, had suffered the same fate as his own father – who also died during an accident in Dock 3, when he fell six storeys, also aged 51.

“Kun imbierka (God bless you). Those were his last words to me before he walked out that Friday night… That night I was on sick leave. Before my father went to work, he came near me and told me to lower the volume of the television. I told him I could not hear because my ears were blocked. Then, before he left I told him: ‘Bless me’,” recalls Mary Grace, who is now 46.

Later that night she woke up to sudden knocking at the door. She went to open with her mother. It was about 3.55am. Two drydocks security officers had gone to deliver the news that her father was in hospital “with slight injuries”. Mary Grace, who was then 22, stayed in their Żabbar home since she was sick.

“When my mother returned home her face was white. She couldn’t speak. My brother told me he was dead. People started coming over as the word spread about what happened,” she says.

The next few days were difficult. She and her brother went to identify their father’s mangled body.

Mary Grace  - who was one of Angelo Sciberras’ four children – is determined to keep his memory alive and has put together a commemorative book to mark the 25th anniversary called Qatt Minsija (Never Forgotten).

Becoming a widow

Rita Seguna, 61, who lost her husband, Paul, in the blast, recalls having supper together with the children that fateful night.

“I prepared some food for him to eat later – cauliflower and tuna patties. I’ll never forget because they came back when they cleared his locker.”

Paul’s name is now tattooed on her ring finger. It is a recent gesture to remember the man she loved so dearly and who was taken away so abruptly.

On February 4, 1995, at about 5.30am, police and Drydocks’ security officers knocked at her door and told her that her husband, a slinger, was injured. She woke her three children – aged between three and six – and took them to her neighbour, then called her brother to take her to hospital.

By the time she arrived, Paul had died. He had been prepped for surgery but died from internal bleeding.

Rita had to break the news to her children. “I told them papa was near God. My youngest kept saying he wanted him back from heaven. When we’d go to the cemetery, we’d all put our ears to the tombstone to try to hear him talk to us,” she says.

Rita had to pull herself together for her children, succumbing to tears when they were not around. She joined a support group for widows and widowers with children from where she got a lot of help.

“The children suffer. One moment we were all having dinner together and the next he was gone. His place at table remained there. As they grew older, they got angry. These men died because of negligence of others – and not their own. It still hurts them. If they could, my children would delete the third and fourth of February from the calendar,” she says.

However, Rita feels it’s important to remember. 

“This was something that shook the country. We have to keep remembering that there should be safety at work. Whenever someone dies at work, my heart sinks,” she says.