Five days after the storm, family fears massive partly uprooted tree will crash onto their historic house

A grade one scheduled building which hit the headlines recently because of fears it will be ‘buried’ by modern multi-storey buildings around it, now faces a more imminent danger.

The weekend’s storm partly uprooted a massive five-storey tree on a public road, leaving it delicately balanced on the partly demolished boundary wall of the 500-year-old Villa Barbaro in Tarxien, posing a danger not just to the property, but to the people who live there or use the street.

“This is an extremely serious emergency situation and whilst our lives literally hang in the balance, the three different entities concerned (the ELC consortium, the Civil Protection, and Tarxien Local Council) were until not long ago squabbling amongst themselves as to whose job it was to remove the danger,” the owner of the property, Marquis Cremona-Barbaro said.

He explained that the strong wind on Sunday had dislodged the tree and it was literally only being held up by one half of the garden wall, the other half having already collapsed under the weight.

He had immediately alerted the Civil Protection Department to the danger, but given the damage across the island, they did not have the resources to tackle it. He...