by Levi J Parsons
SYDNEY, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- The news of a four-month-old, 36-storey residential apartment building in Australia cracking at the seams left many in the country's property sector wondering if this was just the tip of the iceberg.
In order to get to the bottom of what happened at the Opal Tower in Sydney, the New South Wales (NSW) state government commissioned an independent investigation to be carried out by two university professors.
Although an interim statement released by the pair deemed the building "structurally sound," the cause of the incident and the extent of the problem remained unclear, and the complex's 3,000 residents were advised not to move back in until the report is completed and safety is confirmed.
SHOCK AND ANGER
The dramatic scene began on Christmas eve three weeks ago when some residents heard "loud cracking noises" throughout the building.
Fearing the tower could collapse, authorities and the developer Ecove evacuated the entire complex and roped off a 1-km exclusion zone around the building.
As a result, a number of residents were reported to have spent Christmas eve sleeping in their cars before they were eventually put up in hotels.
Moving in around two months ago to her 29th-floor apartment, Opal Tower resident Liu Miao recently told Xinhua that "I did not hear the cracking myself but on the 24th (of December), I heard the fire alarm and we were all evacuated. It wasn't until later when I checked the news on my phone that I realized that the problem was so severe."
"When you look at renting an apartment, who would think of this?" said Liu, who has lived in Sydney for around one year after moving from China to work as an accountant.
"I couldn't believe that it was real. I couldn't believe anything like this could happen in Australia. It's scary," she said.
With the initial shock of the incident now beginning to fade, some of the tenants' confusion has turned to frustration.
"As soon as we heard that (the building may collapse), my wife broke down and started to cry," level-25 renter Ehsan Jahanandish told SBS News.
"My wife was in shock and she was worried about our home."
Residents are growing angrier about the disruption to their daily lives and work routines.
Liu said she had booked a two-week holiday over the Christmas period. "I planned to relax but I spent the whole time packing and unpacking," she said.
"What annoys me the most is all the time finding and booking our hotels and worrying about where we will go. That is wasting a lot of our time," she added.
TIP OF THE ICEBERG?
While tenants in the Opal Tower are angry, buyers in the country's broader real estate market are becoming increasingly nervous.
Long before the ill-fated events of Dec. 24, former state government official Michael Lambert suggested in a 2015 report that "incidents of building defects" are "significant" and "widespread" across NSW.
According to Alisha Fisher, chief executive officer of Strata Community Association, the Opal Tower may be just the "tip of the iceberg."
"The bottom line is that the last 12 months have been a horror story for the construction sector in Australia," she told The Australian Newspaper.
"Like we've seen with the cracking at Opal Tower and in cases where buildings with flammable cladding catch alight suddenly, there's no telling when Australian apartment owners will be next affected by poor construction."
"This is an issue of potentially epidemic proportion and we believe it needs to be treated that way with a national construction sector audit."
With many in the sector pointing the finger at the use of private certifiers - who often give development projects the all clear with "very little oversight" from the government - Lambert's report called for an overhaul of the current system.
In response to the concerns, the NSW opposition Party, the Labor Party, said if it wins this year's state election, they will not allow builders and construction firms to choose their own certifiers.
"DON'T JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS"
As Icon Co, the builder of the Opal Tower, sweats on the government-commissioned report by independent investigators Mark Hoffman and John Carter, the official body of Australia's home building industry told Xinhua that until the facts of what happened are known, people should not jump to conclusions.
"To have structural issues with a building is really not something we've ever seen reported on in Australia before, so there's a lot of finger-pointing going on," said Simon Croft, executive director of Building Policy at Australia's Housing Industry Association.
"But generally our national construction code which governs the country's construction work is regarded as one of the most robust in the world and we have a very good track record in Australia, and often other countries look to mirror our building codes."
While it is not clear when the final report will be completed and those involved wait with bated breath, talks among owners of a major class-action lawsuit are already underway.
