The Greek authorities have launched a preliminary investigation into the collapse of a building in the Petralona neighborhood of Athens, while the five people arrested after the incident have been released pending the completion of the investigation.
The prosecution has ordered the development of an investigation to determine whether the rules and legislation related to the construction works have been violated. The people who were detained and arrested are the two owners of the land, who are also engineers and shareholders of the construction company, the two responsible engineers of the project and the contractor of the works.
During today, specialized teams of the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Municipality of Athens will carry out technical inspections and static checks on all buildings near the building that collapsed at 22 Alkminis Street.
According to the first checks, structural problems were also found in an adjacent four-story building, where damage was observed to the base of the building. Experts are assessing whether the withdrawal of soil, caused by the excavations in the neighboring plot, has also created a risk for other buildings.
Doubts about the causes of the collapse
According to those arrested, the collapse may have been caused by a water leak in the pipes during the previous days, which weakened the ground where the excavations were being carried out.
However, the residents of the palace give a different version. They claim that since morning they had heard cracking in the building and had noticed large cracks. An engineer called by the residents found that the building had taken on a slope of 5 degrees.
When the residents expressed their concerns to the engineer of the neighboring construction site, he, according to their testimonies, replied with irony: “Even the Leaning Tower of Pisa is tilted, but it has not fallen.”
Within about an hour, the slope of the building increased from 5 to 14 degrees. The resident engineer immediately notified the six families living in the building and instructed them to leave. A little later, the construction workers also knocked on the doors of the apartments and demanded the immediate evacuation of the building, citing “loud noises” as the reason.
This action raised suspicions among the police that the site managers may have realized that the excavations had damaged the foundations of the neighboring building and were trying to avoid the consequences. Investigators are also looking into reports that quick-setting concrete was planned to be poured to temporarily stabilize the building.
What is being investigated?
Experts believe the collapse may be the result of a combination of factors. The collapsed palace was built in 1970, had no basement and its foundations were only 1-1.3 meters deep. A five-story building with a basement was being built on the neighboring plot, for which excavations were being carried out to a depth of about 6 meters.
One of the issues being investigated is whether a technical team had earlier recommended reinforcing the ground with shotcrete to avoid the risk of collapse, but this measure was not implemented due to cost.
On the other hand, specialists emphasize that a building built according to standards should not be demolished only as a result of works on the neighboring land. For this reason, it is being investigated whether the palace had previous structural problems, weaknesses in the supporting skeleton or whether there were geological features in the area that contributed to the collapse.
The four-storey building collapsed at noon on Tuesday at 22 Alkminis Street, in the Petralona area of Athens, while the Greek authorities have launched an investigation to clarify the causes of the event.
