“At 1am on Wednesday an empty three-storey adjacent building collapsed, then the Civil Defence Forces came and ordered us to evacuate our apartment building. Two hours later our building tilted over the opposite building.” Thus stated Nabil, one of the tenants of the notorious leaning apartment building in Alexandria. Last Wednesday, the Mediterranean city witnessed a rare architectural accident when a 13-storey apartment building leaned on another on the opposite side of the narrow street in the neighbourhood of Azaritta. The incident required the evacuation of both the inclined building and the opposite one; there was no loss of life or injury, but later the residents of all nearby buildings were also evacuated. Security forces have cordoned off the area, preventing pedestrians from approaching as a precaution in the case the building totally collapsed. Mohamed Sultan, the governor of Alexandria, told the press that all necessary measures have been taken to provide emergency housing for the evacuees; there is coordination with the Social Solidarity Ministry to fulfil all their needs. He said, “more than 40 housing units have been provided in the Amireya cooperative housing project as a permanent shelter” to those affected. For her part, Social Solidarity Minister Ghada Wali said on Thursday that 40 people have already been provided with emergency housing units and places were ready for another 60. The ministry said it will also provide a daily stipend of LE100 as well as daily meals to each person affected over the next three days until the demolition is complete and the families moved to other housing. The inclined building has only 13 floors with 13 apartments, but the number of those affected is still being determined; it is probably over 120 families from the surrounding buildings. The governor and the social solidarity minister say 40 people have been relocated to contemporary houses, and dozens are still homeless after being evacuated. “We are living a real tragedy. We are staying in the street and sleeping in the mosque,” Mohamed Sami, a 55-year-old man who was evacuated along with his family, told Al-Ahram Weekly. “Our apartment building is in the same area, 20 metres away from the inclined building. The Civil Defence Forces evacuated the whole neighbourhood. About 30 individuals have been living in the mosque in the meantime.” Sami spoke while sitting on the stairs of the mosque, about 50 metres away from the inclined building. The governor said all services including gas, electricity and water have been suspended in the area; and the Alexandria tramway network has also been halted to prevent vibrations that may cause the building further damage. Nevertheless, when the Weekly visited the area on Sunday the tram was working. Nabil says that, a couple of months ago, the residents began to sense something uncomfortable about the building: “A few months ago we began to recognise a slight leaning of the building. It began with small incidents: the room doors refused to stay closed for example. Days later we noticed that the pavement in front of the building had curved. We went to the head of the district to report these events.” Confronted with this information, the head of the Alexandria Central District Ali Morsi said: “We have known about the violations in the apartment building since its construction in 2003. The inclined building was constructed in 2003 with a licence for only three floors including the ground floor but 13 floors were illegally constructed,” he told the Weekly. “In 2004, a demolition decision was issued for the building but the municipal authorities were not able to demolish it due to the objection of the residents. The tenants chose to live there at their own personal risk.” Sultan said initial reports indicate that the leaning was caused by excessive height as well as underground water, which weakened the foundation of the building. Those responsible for the building's unsafe conditions have already been referred to the prosecution, he added: “Investigations have begun to find the cause of the collapse,” he said, stressing that all perpetrators and those responsible for the incident will be held accountable and promptly referred to trial. Meanwhile, a committee formed by the Housing Ministry began to draft a technical report so that those responsible may be held accountable. Besides, the East Alexandria prosecution is investigating the incident after security arrested the owner of the leaning building, Mervat Awad Nasr, who was later referred to prosecution. She was questioned by prosecutors over charges of illegal building and endangering citizens' lives. On the other hand, on Sunday, the demolition of the leaning building was resumed for the third day by the army's Northern Zone Engineering Division in coordination with the Arab Contractors Company, Petrojet Company and Alexandria University's Faculty of Engineering. It was decided that the process of demolishing the building should be undertaken manually and gradually from top to base. Professor of concrete Al-Toni Mohamed, a supervisor of the demolition, says that “we have not witnessed such a sharp inclination in an apartment building before. We decided to demolish it gradually and manually from the upper floors. The decision was taken after thorough studies and takes into account the status of the building, its inclination, the nearby building, available machinery and equipment and the length of the surrounding streets,” Mohamed told the Weekly. Though this method will take longer it is safer for the workers and nearby buildings and enables the extraction of furniture and other contents from the building's apartments. Sultan had previously ordered strict measures to ensure that nothing is stolen from the inclined building and the opposite one so that their owners can have them back. “By demolishing floor by floor, we are trying to ease the weight on the foundation of the building in its tilted state leaning on the opposite building which is two floors higher than the inclined one,” Mohamed said. Though Sultan made a statement to the media in which he said the opposite building can endure the weight, Mohamed says, “based on the engineering calculations, the opposite building cannot afford the extra weight of the inclined building. The only reason it has withstood the extra load is divine providence.” As for the reasons why the inclined building didn't totally collapse and only leaned on the opposite building, Mohamed says, “there are reasons related to the methods of constructing the building and others linked to prior conditions. Concerning its construction, the width of the building is very low for its height as the small dimension of the building is about four metres while its height is 40 metres. Moreover, the building was constructed on filling-up soil, which is known to be affected by water on the surface. As for the immediate cause, it's the fact that another building adjacent to it collapsed which led to the rarefaction of the soil beneath it. It had been tilting more and more and now it toppled over onto the opposite building.” The collapse of buildings is commonplace in Egypt and it usually results from poor maintenance, violations of building codes, illegal extensions and lax construction as well as corruption in local district administrations that supervise construction licences. In March, three buildings collapsed in Cairo alone. Two of them were in Boulaq and left at least five injured while the third was in Garden City. MP Alaa Wali, the chairman of parliament's Housing Committee, said the problem of the collapsing and cracked buildings is one of the most important facing the state. “The reason for this tragic situation we are living is the government that issued the Unified Construction Law 119/2008 by which it handed over power to the local districts' administrations,” Wali said in a press statement on Saturday. “Due to that law, corruption and negligence, bribes started being paid for construction licences and we began to witness collapsing buildings and others leaning towards one another.” In the meantime, a draft reconciliation law to pardon the owners of buildings showing violations in return for them paying the state and redressing the issues is being discussed in parliament. The Youm7 website quoted MP Adel Badawi, a member of parliament's Housing, Public Utilities and Reconstruction Committee as saying the average revenue of implementing the law is estimated at LE90 billion. Though the law has been vehemently disputed by MPs, Badawi believes it should be passed to end the chaos of construction violations. “The most important conditions of reconciliation in the draft law is ensuring the safety of the construction of buildings and that they are not built on agricultural land.”
