Sleeping woman narrowly escapes death after sagging roof of rental home comes crashing down
GOLD COAST, AUSTRALIA: In a tragic tale of improper housing situations, a woman narrowly escaped death as her ceiling roof broke and collapsed down on her. Melissa Ware, a New Zealand native, had been staying with her cousin in Hollywell when the incident had taken place. Ware was “fast asleep” when she heard a loud noise. “All of a sudden there was a loud bang and I felt an enormous weight on top of me,” Ware had said of the moment she realized that the roof was collapsing. “It was pitch black so I had no idea what was happening and panicked.”
In pictures of Ware being found at the scene, the woman was pictured trapped in a huge pile of debris as she howled out in pain. Only her head peaked out from under the rubble and she had been found “pleading for help.” Incidents such as these always leave the victims scarred and terrified, and Ware is no different. She has opened up about how she hasn't been getting a wink of sleep ever since, scared that the event would repeat itself.
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Anxiety, nightmares: Roof collapse has left Ware terrified
“I’ve had terrible anxiety, nightmares, hypervigilance, and sleeplessness,” Ware said of her mental troubles since that unfortunate night. “I’m constantly waiting for something else bad to happen.. I revisit that night every time I close my eyes.” The collapse has left Ware with injuries on her neck and back — requiring her to take pain medication and physiotherapy as well.
Ceiling cracks there for ‘three or four years’
While the incident seems very far off from being a regular occurrence, it seems that the signs for something like this to happen have been there for quite a while. Ware’s cousin, the woman whom she had been staying with, had said that she had been raising the issue of ceiling cracks at every inspection with her property manager for the past ‘three to four years’. “I kept contacting Ray White and asking them what was happening with it but they kept saying they were waiting for a response from the landlord, she said according to Yahoo! News.
The family has since moved out of the property, and a liability claim has been filed against the landlord. “We discovered the issues with the ceiling during a routine inspection by the property manager,” Principle Ali Mian of the Ray White Runaway Bay had said. “We advised the landlord of the maintenance issue and had been waiting for instructions from the owner to engage a tradesperson.”
He apologized profusely for the damage caused, and has also assured that the “owner is now undertaking a full repair and renovation of their property’s space room.”
