An 80-year-old man was left grievously injured after a demolition site collapsed on the very first day of works, with police and the Occupational Health and Safety Authority opening an inquiry into yet another construction accident that has raised fresh questions about supervision, commencement procedures and safety compliance on Malta’s building sites. Officers were called to the site at around 9.15am after reports that part of the structure being prepared for demolition had given way without warning, burying the elderly man, believed to be either a resident of an adjacent property or a worker present to observe the start of the project, under rubble and concrete debris, prompting an immediate response from civil protection teams and an ambulance that transported him to Mater Dei Hospital where he was certified as suffering grievous injuries.
Preliminary investigations show that clearance to commence the demolition had only recently been issued by the Building and Construction Authority following the submission of a formal commencement notice, a document that under Maltese law must be signed by a licensed mason who assumes responsibility for the site, a requirement that recent magisterial inquiries into the Kordin and Jean Paul Sofia collapses found had been bypassed through forged signatures and absent supervision. Witnesses told police the collapse occurred suddenly and without any noise before the ceiling began caving in, with the structure falling outwards rather than inwards, a pattern that experts have previously linked to double walls not being tied together properly and to the lack of an interlocking system that would prevent a local failure from bringing down the entire building. A stop notice was immediately issued by the BCA ordering all works to cease except those necessary to render the site and street safe, while Magistrate Philip Galea Farrugia appointed technical experts to assist the magisterial inquiry and OHSA officers secured the site to examine whether shoring, piling recommendations and third-party protection measures had been followed.
