Opal Tower residents left in a high-rise hell
Frustrated residents forced out of their high rise apartments at Christmas due to collapse fears have been put up in temporary accommodation but many fear they’ll be left in limbo while others simply don’t feel safe living at Olympic Park’s Opal Towers anymore.
NSW
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Frustrated residents who were forced out of their high rise apartment block on Christmas due to collapse fears have been put up in temporary accommodation but many worry how long they’ll be stuck in limbo.
And some who have been cleared to return have slammed building management for their bungled handling of the emergency evacuation and don’t feel safe living at Opal Towers anymore.
Some 300 people fled from 150 apartments at Sydney Olympic Park and were taken to a crisis centre on Monday afternoon after residents heard cracking sounds coming from the 38-storey building.
The occupants of 51 units located along a vertical column on the western side of the complex were told after midnight they couldn’t return to their homes which had been deemed unsafe.
They’ve since been put up in the nearby Novotel and Ibis hotels while builders began remedial works on Wednesday.
“Some noise is expected as well as delayed lift waiting times over the course of the day,” Waterpoint building manager Adrian De Dona said in an email to residents before midday.
“The car park exit/entry will also be rather busy today so please use caution when in this area. We thank everyone for their time and patience.”
Some residents had already booked hotels at peak season holiday rates and were told to keep receipts for compensation.
The builders, Icon Construction, have also offered to compensate residents who were forced to book hotels on Christmas Eve.
The company notified residents from the unsafe 51 units on Christmas night that they would be housed for free on an “ongoing” basis.
“Accommodation expenses at other locations will also still be covered provided reasonable,” the strata managing agent for Opal Towers wrote in an email to residents at 6.30pm on Tuesday.
In forwarding that email, Waterpoint apologised for not issuing updates more frequently but added “as you can imagine onsite staff have been otherwise occupied”.
Delsa Daryai, who lives in one of the 51 units, was forced to leave with her mum and doesn’t know when she will return or whether she’ll be required to pay rent going forward.
“We’re paying $600 per week - it’s not cheap,” she told The Daily Telegraph.
“We’re worried - how long are we going to stay in a hotel? Who is going to answer us? No one is taking responsibility.”
More than 48 hours after the incident, authorities were still unclear on what caused the building’s damage or who was responsible.
Ms Daryai said she’s sick of being kept in the dark, saying she’s only received around eight brief and generalised alert emails since the saga began.
She says she doesn’t feel comfortable returning to Opal and wants to break her lease which still has six months left.
Ehsan Jahanandish was given the all clear to return to Opal on Christmas Day but he says his wife Saghar Asrar is scared the building will crumble and has barely slept.
“A couple of times when she fell asleep out of exhaustion she woke up with the nightmare of alarms going off again,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
Mr Jahanandish said he was told there’d be at least another day’s wait before engineers complete further assessments of the 51 damaged units.
“If some part of it is jeopardised how are the other parts safe?” he said.
“During this incident we haven’t heard anything face to face from the building management and the strata, the builders, (or) the developers.”
Mr Jahanandish said on Tuesday the couple flagged concerns about water leaking through the walls of a basement carpark yet building management staff brushed them off.
Ilya Levchenko, his wife Anastasia Chen and their two young children were also permitted to return to Opal but he said he was woken up at 7am on Boxing Day by a strange “tick” noise in the building.
“The sound was like if you have two rocks and they hit each other,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
“After this sound I was not able to sleep more.”
The permanent residents from Russia signed a one-year lease a month ago and had barely finished unpacking, but Mr Levchenko said they’ll stay because moving again would be so costly.
“My wife is a little bit stressed by this,” he said.
The couple and their two-year-old twins Ivan and Alina were taken in by friends on Christmas Eve and Mr Levchenko’s biggest concern was the lack of communication and emergency accommodation provided for families or people with disabilities.
Completed just four months ago, the $165 million, 392-unit complex was developed by Ecove — a company which has built three other towers nearby in Sydney Olympic Park.
The state government is now urgently investigating the the structural integrity of the building and it’s compliance.
COULD THIS HAPPEN IN OTHER DEVELOPMENTS?
NSW opposition leader Michael Daley said an investigation into the incident needed to find out why “the structural integrity of the building failed”.
“The investigation needs to do its work quickly, it needs to have appropriately qualified people looking at all the aspects of this development and the findings need to be made public so that we can learn from what has happened here,” he said outside the Opal.
“The investigation also needs to look at whether the ramifications of what has happened here has any consequences for other developments in this area or in other parts of Sydney given this developer is doing several projects across Sydney.”
Mr Daley stressed development in the private sector should not be rushed, saying “when you’re in a hurry you make mistakes”.
“When it comes to development in the private sector, you have to make sure that the controls and the checks and balances are there – I don’t want to preempt what the investigation might find – but when you’re in a hurry you make mistakes, so we have to make sure that builders and developers who are putting up developments like this are not in a hurry and that appropriate safeguards and checks are there,” he said.