St Julian's Crane Drops Steel: Construction Site Claims Another Car

The metal hit the Nissan's windshield at 8:47 AM.

Not a chunk of concrete this time. Not scaffolding. Steel rebar, the kind that holds buildings together when they're finished. It fell sixty meters from a tower crane working the construction site that used to be someone's garden in St Julian's. The kind of garden where hibiscus grew wild against limestone walls before developers discovered the postcode.

The woman driving was twenty-eight. Portuguese, works for a gaming company, moved here two years ago for the weather and stayed for a salary she couldn't find in Lisbon. She was driving to work down the same street she takes every morning, past the same construction sites that change the skyline while she sleeps.

The rebar punched through the passenger side of the windshield. Six centimeters to the left and this becomes a different story entirely.

She pulled over immediately. Hands shaking. Called her boyfriend first, then the police, then her insurance company. In that order. The kind of order that tells you she's been in Malta long enough to understand how things work here.

The crane operator stopped work immediately. Yellow hard hats gathered around the base of the crane, pointing upward, trying to understand how a piece of rebar falls from a properly secured load. The kind of investigation that happens in whispers because everyone knows this shouldn't happen but everyone also knows it happens more than anyone talks about.

Mater Dei Hospital. Observation ward. She's fine - shaken, bruised from the seatbelt, small cut on her hand from glass fragments. But fine in the way that makes you realize how thin the margin is between fine and not fine. Between making it to work and not making it anywhere ever again.

The construction site belongs to a developer who builds apartments for people who work in gaming companies. The kind of circle that closes on itself in a country this small. She might have ended up buying one of those apartments someday, if she stayed long enough.

Her boyfriend picked her up at the hospital at noon. They drove past three other construction sites on the way home. Each one had cranes working overhead. Each one had cars passing underneath.

The rebar is still in the car. Evidence for the police report, the insurance claim, the questions that will be asked and probably not answered.

She's thinking about moving back to Lisbon. Not because of the accident. Because of what the accident means about living in a place where the sky is always falling in small pieces.

The crane started working again at 2 PM.