Customer service may have saved shopowner's life

Marcelle Bugeja was about to get into her car when two clients walked into her shop on Monday morning. Seeing the salesgirls were busy, she doubled back in to help them - and moments later heard a deafening sound outside.

Thinking it was an earthquake, she rushed outside with the customers and salesgirls. Little did she expect to find a huge concrete slab depressing the roof of her car and heavy slabs and chunks of loose stonework crushing its bonnet and littering the street.

A stone balcony had come crashing down on the parked charcoal-grey Toyota Auris in Main Gate Street, Victoria, after it gave way under the weight of heavy rainfall on Monday. The second-floor balcony had fallen on the balcony beneath it before landing on the car.

The shower of stone and concrete distorted the car's metal framework and dislodged its windscreen while loose stonework badly dented the bonnet and bumper.

Some guardian angel must have been watching over Ms Bugeja and the clients' presence saved her from getting into the car.

Ms Bugeja considered herself very lucky because she always left the shop, Marcelle's Boutique, at around the same time. She was convinced that the two customers she assisted had, unwittingly, saved her life.

Speaking in a thick Gozitan accent, Ms Bugeja said the car belonged to her brother but she occasionally used it herself. They had bought the car recently, but that was the least of her worries when she witnessed the scene.

"I was a bit angry about the car, especially since it's relatively new, but I was worried that someone might have got hurt," she said when contacted yesterday.

"Luckily it was raining, so people scattered to find shelter, but if it wasn't the street would have been very busy at that time of day."

Two other cars driving past the building at the time of the incident were damaged in a spray of debris. One had its windshield shattered.

It was initially thought the balcony collapsed after being struck by a bolt of lightning but it later emerged it had given way under the heavy rains as no scalding was found on the stonework.

The hanging stonework from the damaged first-floor balcony was later removed. The building belongs to a Maltese accountancy firm and the landlord was looking for a tenant to rent the first-floor offices.