We were in our apartment last night, just after 8pm, talking with friends when Florio asked, “did you hear that loud bang?”. It’s firework season again, here in Malta – i.e. loud bangs are all too frequent! – so we didn’t think too much about it, until we heard the wailing of multiple sirens, racing around the bay. The balcony of the Barracuda Restaurant, opposite our apartment across Balluta Bay, where eight diners were seated for dinner (according to reports in the Times of Malta), had collapsed onto the roof of Piccolo Padre Restaurant’s terrace, below – which, very fortunately, was empty of diners – launching the people onto the rocks and into water below. In fact, we had dined there with friends just last week and kicked ourselves for not having booked a terrace table.
We watched as boat rescue services made a rapid dash to the scene, where we could hear a woman moaning and crying out – from what we could make out, across the darkened bay (with the aid of binoculars and a zoom lens), was the rescue team in the water, aiding the injured; watched over by hundreds of onlookers, no doubt equally as shocked as we were, who had gathered on the promenade above.
We also watched the news unfold, online, in the Times of Malta, thankful to hear that ‘no one had been seriously hurt‘. However, catching up on the news this morning in TofM, sadly, it seems that one woman is in a ‘critical condition‘ and a man has ‘serious injuries‘.
Sending healing thoughts and best wishes to them and their families.
