“The detection of an unbounded wall should ring an alarm bell,” he said.
Did he fear something will collapse on him?
Another court-appointed expert, Mario Buttigieg, testified about his conclusions after examining the accident site and finding the “hammer of the hymac [construction machinery] inserted in the rock, literally speaking.”
Tracks on the ground indicated the semi-circular trajectory taken by the hydraulic excavator as it turned backwards, away from the wall beneath the Pace residence to the opposite side of the construction site.
Buttigieg said that footage capturing the moment of the incident showed that as the machine was about to move backwards, the building collapsed.
Confusing construction industry regulations partly to blame for Ħamrun house collapse, court hears
Court appointed expert Architect Alex Torpiano testifies in court, saying that the house collapse that claimed the life of Miriam Pace was in part down to the state of confusion in industry regulations
26 February 2021, 4:40pm
by Matthew Agius
A leading architect has told a court that the collapse of a house in Ħamrun that claimed the life of Miriam Pace was partly down to “the state of confusion in the industry’s regulations.”
Alex Torpiano was testifying in proceedings against the two architects responsible for the building site next door to Pace’s family home, 36-year old Roderick Camilleri and 72-year old Anthony Mangion.
The police had had seven reports of incidents involving the same contractor who was working on a site in Sta Venera last March when an adjoining house collapsed, killing resident Miriam Pace, a court heard on Thursday.
Superintendent Robert Vella, handling investigations after the tragic episode, said the reports about Ludvic Dimech or LK Ltd, took place between October 2008 and December 2019.
Days after the Hamrun tragedy, the contractor was involved in a road collapse at Pender Gardens, St Julians.
Obviously [Dimech] is not the only contractor who had such incidents,” Vella pointed out, further noting that some of those reports concerned incidents involving Enemalta cables.
Two of four men who are facing criminal charges over the Ħamrun house collapse that killed Miriam Pace have objected to their case being decided by a magistrate s court.
The accused are architects Roderick Camilleri, 37 and Anthony Mangion, 73, as well as 37-year old excavation contractor Ludwig Dimech and 42-year old construction worker Nicholas Spiteri.
Dimech and Spiteri informed the court on Tuesday that they were formally objecting to having their case dealt with summarily,(before the magistrates’ court), opting instead to proceed to trial before the Criminal Court.
The decision means that proceedings will now continue before Magistrate Joseph Mifsud in respect of the two architects and it is only when those proceedings have run their course, including at appeal stage, that a bill of indictment may be issued in respect of the other two accused.
A magistrates’ court has declared that it will not allow construction works to continue nor machinery to be removed from the site of a fatal Ħamrun house collapse earlier this year, pending judgment.
“You can repair a truck but you cannot bring back a person’s life,” stated Magistrate Joseph Mifsud, voicing aloud his position on two applications filed by defence lawyers assisting four persons currently accused with the involuntary homicide of Miriam Pace.
They are Roderick Camilleri, 36, from Rabat, the project’s architect; Anthony Mangion, a 72-year-old architect from Gżira who served as the construction project’s site technical officer; 36-year-old excavation contractor Ludwig Dimech from Żebbuġ; and 42-year-old construction worker Nicholas Spiteri, from Mqabba.