Building collapses
Lefkoşa council staff, journalists and bystanders survey the wreckage of the collapse of an old house in the walled city — which officials said could have killed.
TWO workers or passers-by could have been killed when a decades-old house in Lefkoşa’s walled city collapsed on Thursday morning.
The labourers had a narrow escape when they fled just minutes before the building came crashing down at 10.30am, dumping rubble into a street behind the Gamblers’ Inn (Kumarcılar Han).
The building is in an area where Lefkoşa Turkish Municipality has been working on the second stage of Asmaaltı city centre pedestrianisation project, and which was temporarily evacuated while the site was made safe. The old house is owned by the Evkaf religious foundation and the workmen were carrying out initial measurements for a refurbishment by leaseholder of about three years Girne American University (GAU).
The building, believed to date back to the 1940s, had previously been used as two shops, and GAU were planning to turn it into a patisserie and organic local produce outlet.
The workmen had removed shelves left over from to its days as a shoe store when they realised the retaining wall in the middle of the building was about to give way. Evkaf Estates Department head Ahmet Dorukan said there had been no visible sign of the mud-brick structure’s deterioration because the external walls were rendered, but it had been weakened by rainwater penetration. The building was not listed as a historical structure, but all old buildings are considered “protected” in the walled city, a conservation area both under 1989 Nicosia Master Plan and the 1994 Antiquities Law.
Municipality project head Ali Güralp told Cyprus Today that council teams have conducted inspections, and while the precise reason for the collapse has not yet been established, he confirmed: “It’s likely that it collapsed after the removal of the shelves, which caused the displacement of the retaining wall in the middle of the building.”
Municipal civil engineer Zeka Yılmaz said 90 per cent of the strucutre had been lost, and added: “It could have resulted in a much worse situation . . . even causing a fatality or injuries . . . if workers, local residents, shopkeepers or tourists had been passing.”
GAU project coordinator Gülhan Nalbantoğlu said the university, which had refurbished other old buildings in the walled city, was prepared to do and fund whatever was needed to make good.
“We are ready to build an identical building there if our offer to do so secures approval,” he said, adding: “We were just so lucky that there was no loss of life.”