Many modern buildings are not robust enough to withstand a moderate earthquake, let alone a strong one, a former government construction advisor has warned.

Architect Martin De Bono told Times of Malta that a tremor sustained for long enough could send several buildings crumbling to the ground, and he fears we might not be far from one.

“Malta is typically hit by one big earthquake every 100 years… And it’s been more than 100 years since the last big one.”

Not all buildings are facing such a risk, he said, but the most concerning are those with showrooms, shops or big open spaces on the ground floor, and on top of which there are several other floors of offices or apartments.

They are called 'soft storey' buildings, typically because their ground floor or basement is mostly made of a number of pillars holding the rest of the storeys on top of them. Often there are few other walls holding the building.

The more modern of these soft storey buildings also typically house several other floors of offices or apartments on top of the ground floor.

Those buildings are notoriously dangerous worldwide and are often the first to collapse during earthquakes, which is what happened during the last devastating earthquake in Turkey, De Bono said.

“Don’t get me wrong – the pillars are strong enough to hold the weight of the building. The problem is during a tremor or an earthquake, because they cannot withstand the ground shaking for long,” he said.

“Imagine stacking blocks of concrete on top of each other onto a table with four legs. It’ll probably support their weight, but if you shake the ground beneath the table, it’s only a matter of time until those legs give in.”

De Bono said this does not mean buildings will collapse like dominos during the next earthquake. There are a number of factors that affect the probability of a building collapsing during an earthquake, including the position of the building, the buildings next to it, the ground they are built on and the magnitude and effects of the earthquake. But buildings designed with soft storeys are at higher risk of collapse, he said.

“The worst thing about it is that a building could crumble even if not all pillars give in. In certain circumstances, it is enough for one or two pillars to break to bring almost the entire building to the ground.”

It is known as disproportionate collapse and it is what happened to Florida’s Champlain Towers in 2021, De Bono said, when the 12-storey residential building collapsed in the middle of the night, killing 98 people in around 12 seconds.

The building did not collapse due to an earthquake and probes into the incident are ongoing, but investigators believe the culprit could have been the long-term degradation of reinforced concrete pillars on the lower floors, he said.

“You must remember that 50 years into its lifetime, concrete loses half its strength,” De Bono said.

‘Many developers don’t care’

Why do they keep building them if they are so dangerous?

It is because many developers do not care, De Bono insists. They know that in case of a devastating earthquake it is easy to blame it on God as a natural disaster.

“And God has truly been on our side so far. With the way we’re building, we’re lucky we haven’t seen many more buildings collapse yet,” he said.

Architects also do not have much of a choice, according to De Bono. They are aware the design of soft storey buildings is far from ideal, but if they refuse to design a pillared showroom on a ground floor, the developer will find some other architect who is willing to do it.

“I can understand some architects might be afraid to speak out, fearing they could lose work. I lost a lot of work myself refusing to work on buildings that I believed were too unsafe,” he said.

“But most importantly, it keeps happening because it’s not illegal to build this way.”

Furthermore, the materials used are often of inferior quality, he said. Bricks that are only certified to withstand a certain load are used in parts of buildings where the load is much greater.

“Bricks are sometimes so frail that they crack as they are being hauled off the truck at the construction site, before workers have even started building with them,” he said.

Even worse, other contractors, such as electricians and plumbers, often enter the building after it is constructed, digging conduit trenches for water and electricity, compromising the structural integrity of the bricks and the building even more.

De Bono acknowledged many genuine contractors and developers do good work responsibly and with great workmanship, but there are enough of the other, rogue contractors that are cause for concern.

He said prospective buyers should always take architects to the property they intend to buy and insist they carry out a thorough observation of the building’s structural situation.

An architect for 35 years

An architect and civil engineer for 35 years, De Bono holds two degrees from a university in Ohio in the US and several architectural courses from universities in Florence in Italy, Sydney in Australia and from the University of Malta.

He is a fully chartered professional architect in Australia, where he was one of the professionals who designed and worked on, among others, Sydney’s Australia Square, shopping arcades and Qantas Airline’s buildings.

In Malta he was one of the interior designers of Malta International Airport and worked on the design or refurbishment of a number of hotels, offices, department stores, residences and apartment buildings.

He was also a Labour councillor at the Sliema local council, was one of the brains behind the creation of the BCA and founder chairperson of the Building Industry Consultative Council (BICC), on which he also served as a technical advisor between 2013 and last year.

The BICC brought together several top experts in the industry to draft policies to enhance safety and quality in construction, which it would then pass on to government to put it into force.

Where are the building codes?

Crucially, the BICC put together Malta’s first building codes – a set of rules, guidelines and regulations for the industry, aimed at setting legal standards for safe and robust buildings.

The experts on the council too, like him, were concerned about modern buildings that seem to be more prone to collapse, he said, and they urged government to take on the building codes.

“But the planning ministry was not keen on them,” De Bono said.

“It seemed to me the powerful construction lobby didn’t want too many rules hindering business.”

Then last year, De Bono’s contract was not renewed.

A warning to the ministry

Then why did he decide to speak now? He is not, he insists. As an advisor, he was constantly sounding the alarm with government authorities.

In an e-mail sent to the planning ministry in July last year, and seen by Times of Malta, De Bono warned that the “callous ways” buildings were being allowed to be legally built would be the cause of a major construction tragedy soon.

“It [is] a matter of time before we have a major incident with many fatalities. [...] We need to work fast, the codes are very urgent,” he had said.

Less than five months later, Jean Paul Sofia was killed in a construction site collapse in Kordin.

Last summer a new law was introduced that obliges all construction contractors to be licensed by January 2025 to be able to operate in demolition, excavation and construction.

But De Bono had cried foul on that as well, saying it could very well be a licence to kill as it could allow incompetent contractors to gain a licence.

“It’s hopeless, come on. It’s a joke, it’s a PR exercise,” he reiterated in this week’s interview.

But the planning ministry constantly maintained the unprecedented contractors’ licensing will, for the first time, evaluate and monitor the previously unregulated profession and will give authorities the power to withdraw the licences of contractors who go rogue.

It also refuted De Bono’s claims, saying they are “factually incorrect” and denied that his or the BICC’s advice was ignored, saying that more safeguards based on the council’s and other stakeholders’ work was in the pipeline.

Most crucially the ministry said the building codes were not ignored.

“Building codes have been discussed and government has received advice from various consultants. It is the government’s intention to finalise this process after due public consultation,” the spokesperson had said.

But the government’s top priority at this stage is the implementation of the licensing process, he said.