Friday 19 / April / 2024
Muscat: An owner of one of the cars damaged in yesterday’s scaffolding collapse incident in Ruwi has expressed her shock at what happened.
The owner, who declined to be named, said her 2016 Honda CR-V was only six months old and it was a huge shock for her and her family to see the car destroyed so badly.
Read here: Scaffolding collapses in Oman, crushes parked cars
“When the incident happened at 2pm yesterday, we heard a very loud noise and I am sure everyone in the area could hear it. All of us rushed out. Since everyone in our building is well connected, we all started texting on our Whatsapp group.
“We obviously realised what had happened and so people came out to see if their cars were fine, and when I got out I saw that my car was the worst hit. All of us were shocked.”
In pictures: Scaffolding falls on cars in Oman
Although she usually parks her car on the other side, she decided to park it close to the building because she had gone grocery shopping and had a lot of shopping bags to carry back home, in addition to the fact that her mother-in-law was also with her.
The woman is now waiting for the insurance compensation from the building contractors, who the scaffolding belonged to.
“There were seven or eight cars that were damaged and we have been told that we will receive compensation for it. So we are just waiting to see what will be the value of the compensation because some are saying that my car falls in the total loss category because of the extent of the damage.
“My car is in the police yard right now, and we are all very worried. However, we are very happy that no one was injured. I just think that the construction company needs to take this matter seriously.”
Another resident of the building said everyone is relieved as their children were not playing in the vicinity when the incident took place. “Normally, all the children from our building are out playing at this time; however we are glad that no one was playing outside when the scaffoldings collapsed.”
“Also 2pm is the time when all the children usually get back from school, but since it’s exam time for all of them at school, they return after 10pm, otherwise there are buses and cars going past that road to drop children.”
“I told my daughter to go and play outside after she came back, but she said that she wanted to do some craft work so didn’t go out and I can only say this is God’s blessing. There was also a vehicle bearing gas cylinders, which had only passed from that area a couple of minutes before the incident took place, otherwise we don’t know what could have happened.”
She said that as soon as the incident took place, people called the police and they came within 10 minutes, and were seen pulling off the scaffolding from the road as it was blocking it. Nobody was driving on the road at the time, and the workers were also safe.
“Everything happened within moments and I can’t imagine how much worse it could have been if the children were out and about. Our building has 49 flats and it’s a new apartment block and it’s fully occupied.”
