NEWS | Wednesday, 18 February 2009

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St Paul’s Bay residents terrified by tragedy waiting to happen

Karl Schembri
Residents in the area of Triq id-Damasku and Triq il-Ħġejjeġ in St Paul’s Bay are living in a state of terror, fearing the worst for themselves and their houses as they await an illegal furnace to explode at any time.
Directly underneath their houses, an underground garage is operating as an illegal gypsum factory from where an explosion last May rocked the foundations of their residences and cracked the walls.
But attempts to get the authorities to shut down the factory over the last years have been met with incredible red tape, prompting the residents to denounce the complacency in the media as they fear for their lives.
The garage lies underneath a shop selling the gypsum products manufactured there, called Cinque Stelle, but contrary to what it is doing, the MEPA permit granted to Nicola Romano in 2005 allows only gypsum fixing in the garage, which was sanctioned “for the fixing of damaged gypsum cornice”.
Families living above the garage have been reporting the owner to the police since 2003, when pungent smells from industrial glue, fine gypsum dust and extreme heat caused by the furnace started seeping through the floor and the shaft.
Residents have been even sending letters through their lawyers to the Occupational Health and Safety Authority to send its inspectors, but they claim the owner manages to dismantle the furnace by the time they arrive.
“I don’t know what else we can do,” an exasperated resident said.
“I’ve filed police reports countless times, but in court it’s taking years for them to act on the case.
“We sleep terrorised at night as we hear the furnace still full on, unmanned, with the risk of gas leakages threatening to explode the whole block.”
Residents claim that, curiously, while police went on site after last May’s explosion, somehow no magisterial inquiry was launched into the incident that left some of the houses damaged with visible cracks.
Letters sent by residents’ lawyers to the Occupational Health and Safety Authority speak of the “tremendous heat” permeating into the residences and about breathing difficulties of residents who are suffering because of industrial chemicals.
“My clients are literally feeling like in a gas chamber in a concentration camp,” wrote lawyer Ian Micallef in a letter dated 5 September 2007.
In another letter sent to the health and safety authority on 29 March 2008, lawyer Kris Balzan wrote about “a big number of gas cylinders that are being used in the same environment, that is at the Cinque Stelle building, which is of great hazard to my clients and to all the residents in the surrounding area”.
Questions sent to MEPA last week remained unanswered. In contrast, Police Commissioner John Rizzo requested a report from the Qawra police into the matter “to check what action has been taken so far and to ensure that all necessary action to stop this inconvenience or other breaches of the law which could be committed”.
The Occupational Health and Safety Authority’s (OHSA) chief executive, Mark Gauci, said the authority had received no information about last year’s explosion.
He confirmed OHSA officers had carried out “a number of inspections” at the garage. “All visits were unannounced and carried out at a time when work was being carried out,” he said, adding that the inspectors never saw a furnace in use or on the premises.
Dr Gauci added that the complainants’ lawyers were informed through letters that inspections were carried out, and about the general findings, but the lawyers insisted they never received correspondence from the authority.
Without divulging the findings, Dr Gauci said the inspectors’ conclusions were corroborated “by an engineer who has drawn up a report of the premises and the work practices at the request of OHSA”.
Until yesterday, residents insisted the garage was being used as usual to heat up the material for the production of gypsum.

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