The grieving husband of a woman who was buried alive in the rubble of her own home has described his shock and grief following the March collapse. 

Testifying in court on Monday, Carmelo Pace described what life had been like on a day-to-day basis next door to a construction site, especially for his wife Miriam, a housewife who dreaded the inconvenience and danger from day one.
  
“[Miriam] was highly anxious and afraid. She was resigned to living with it until the works were completed,” he said. 

The Pace family home in Ħamrun collapsed on March 2, as excavation works went on next door.  Four people, including the project's architect and site manager, have been charged with the involuntary homicide of Miriam Pace.

“Bdejna jekk Alla jrid. Uff!” [‘It’s kicked off, God help us'] Miriam had texted her husband on the first day that works began in February. 

As days went by and works progressed, her anxiety grew. The couple had been thinking about moving to another smaller home and had in fact, last July, showed their Ħamrun property to one of the developers next door. 

“They seemed to be very interested,” Pace recalled today. However, those plans were subsequently scrapped when the couple changed their minds. 

Some days after construction works kicked off, a dividing wall adjoining a garage behind their home had collapsed when the wall surrounding the building site, once a large well-tended garden with many fruit trees, was pulled down.

That incident had terrified Miriam, who later told her husband how she had experienced what seemed “like an earthquake,” and, together with a neighbour, had rushed out of her home to confront the workmen next door. 

“Xi ġralna! Bdejna, jekk Alla jrid,” ['Oh, what's happened to us. It's started, God help us'] were her exact words when she met her husband on his return home from work. 

Family met developer, architect and contractor

That incident had prompted the Pace couple and a neighbour, Rosette Zerafa, to meet with Malcolm Mallia, one of the developers, Roderick Camilleri, the architect and Ludvic Dimech, the contractor. 

During that meeting on February 24, they had complained about the tremors caused by the building works and voiced concern about excavations, insisting that excavation could not, by law, encroach a two-and-a-half-foot distance from the party wall. 

The architect had allegedly brushed off those concerns, saying that “that was the old law,” and explained that they would only use a trencher if rock-cutting was done right next to party wall.

If the legal distance were to be observed, they would not use a trencher.

“Mela ma tafx kemm tiswa’!” [“Don’t you know how much it costs!”] both architect and developer had allegedly told the neighbours, whilst agreeing to carry out a rock sample test and get back to the neighbours before carrying on with the works. 

But after that meeting, neither Pace nor the other neighbours received any feedback. 

Three days after that meeting, on February 27, Carmelo Pace had called out to a workman who was striking a concrete pillar with a sledgehammer. 

His wife told him that they had been at it "all day". 

The works continued right up to that fateful March 2 afternoon when Carmelo Pace had called Miriam, around 2.10pm, slightly later than his daily 2pm call. 

Minutes after hanging up, a colleague at work told him that a house had collapsed at Canon Road, St Venera.

He called his wife on his mobile, but she did no reply. He then tried the landline. When the line went dead, his heart missed a beat. His instincts told him to rush home. 

“That which had been my home, was no longer there,” recalled the man, breaking down as he described those terrible moments.

“I knew that it would take a miracle to pull Miriam out of there alive,” he said, as he went on to explain how the tragedy had completely transformed his family’s life. 

“We lost our home, our memories and all our happiness. Future plans were totally devastated,” he said, explaining that all they had managed to recover from the rubble were a couple of pieces of furniture and his book collection. 

“It’s not so much the material losses as the memories which are gone forever,” Pace explained, his voice cracking.

Neighbour recalls house 'falling like a waterfall'

Three former neighbours of the Pace family also testified on Monday, one of them, Rosette Zerafa, recalled how at the time of the incident she had been chatting to her daughter, abroad on an Erasmus scholarship, via Facebook Messenger.

“Hang on a minute! I don’t know what’s going on!” the woman had suddenly exclaimed as a violent tremor suddenly broke up the conversation.

Peeping out through the bedroom window, the woman saw the neighbouring property falling “like a waterfall” as a second tremor left her rooted to the spot. 

Then she instinctively rushed out on to the street, headlong into a dense white cloud that made it difficult to see ahead or even breathe. 

Realising that the Pace home had collapsed, she grabbed her mobile phone and dialled Miriam’s number, over and over, but received no reply. 

She hoped that Miriam had been out shopping at the time, but as minutes ticked by she despaired, tearful as she recounted the ordeal in court on Monday.

A car dealer who owned a garage on the ground floor of the building that collapsed, Carmel Pace, told the court that he was on his way to the garage at the time of the incident. 

He lost six cars, including one belonging to a third party, in the collapse. 

Accused indicted  

Another neighbour, John Sammut, an ambulance worker, recalled how he had been taking an afternoon nap when disaster struck, explaining how he had been jolted out of his bed by “an explosion, like a tremendous earthquake.”

Looking outside, he described the scene that met his eyes, likening it to [Iraqi capital] “Baghdad” and recalling the entire place being enveloped in a white dust cloud as his instinct prompted him to rush out of his home.

“God spared me that day!” the man said, as he explained how he had called the other family members to break the news. 

Neighbours, like the Pace family, have had to relocate to elsewhere as their homes are not deemed safe.

At the end of the sitting, the court, presided over by magistrate Joseph Mifsud, declared that there was sufficient evidence for all four defendants to be placed under a bill of indictment, before sending the records of the case to the Attorney General.

Lawyers Arthur Azzopardi and Alfred Abela represented the two architects who face charges, Roderick Camilleri and Anthony Mangion. Lawyers Franco Debono and Marion Camilleri appeared on behalf of Nicholas Spiteri, a construction worker charged.

Contractor Ludwig Dimech, was represented by lawyers Michael Sciriha, Roberto Montalto, Lucio Sciriha and Franco Galea.

The Pace family were represented in court by lawyers Joe Giglio and David Bonello. Their neighbours were represented by lawyer Stefano Filletti. 

Inspectors Robert Vella and Matthew Galea prosecuted.