€1m radar totally destroyed in chronicle of an accident foretold

Karl Schembri
Cartoons are expected to exaggerate things, but when last May MaltaToday broke the story of an illegal AFM explosives store in Nadur, Gozo, the accompanying cartoon depicting lightning striking the building housing tons of high explosives proved to be anything but far-fetched.
That’s precisely what happened last Thursday at around 2pm, when at the height of a storm, a lightning bolt hit the army’s base in Gozo, destroying a newly installed €1.16 million radar, the telephone system and computers.
Luckily, there were no explosives at the time of the lightning strike. The MaltaToday story had prompted the Office of the Prime Minister to move all the quarry explosives held illegally at the Nadur base known as Il-Qortin, to Mosta Fort, after a decade sitting on an alarming classifed AFM report urging the government to relocate the explosives from the unsafe store.
But AFM sources, who spoke of a horrifying lightning bolt hitting the radar’s masthead with sparks and fumes clouding the whole camp, remarked on “the sheer luck” of having the explosives removed just five months ago from the store which 10 years ago, defence advisor Martin Scicluna had prophetically earmarked as a potential disaster site.
“The store is not purpose-built for ammunition storage and is not earthed against lightning strikes,” Mr Scicluna wrote in a memo dated 15 May 1998, about the explosives cache situated less than 50 metres from the radar. “It is situated in the middle of the camp. An explosion could have catastrophic consequences.”
In its bid to cover up the seriousness of its explosive illegality, the AFM’s official reaction last May was that the Qortin Base was “a practical and relatively safe operation, which also reduces the frequency of transportation of explosives material from Mosta Fort to Qortin Base,” until the prime minister closed down the explosives store a month later.
The camp is sited directly above a live cable supplying electricity to Nadur, and which is described as being “prone to short-circuit” according to the AFM’s internal memos. When it housed the explosives, it was at much less than the minimum 270-metre distance required from residential areas for explosives storage.
The radar, which is believed to need total replacement, is a top-of-the-range costal radar surveillance system installed by the Maritime Authority and operated by the AFM. Bought from Russia-based company Transas, the radar was installed two years ago and is also used by the AFM in their search and rescue operations, border control and surveillance.
Sources say that despite the army’s shooting range in Nadur and the radar equipment on site, posing clear safety threats to any explosives cache that could be placed there, the defence directorate within OPM is still considering rebuilding a store “according to international standards” on the same site.
The prime minister had ordered AFM to conduct “a full review” of the situation at Nadur and to submit recommendations after MaltaToday exposed the potentially catastrophic conditions there.

kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt

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