ABU DHABI // Residents of a landmark luxury apartment building in the capital have raised concerns about their safety following recent flooding that shut down lifts for more than 48 hours.
Tenants of Nation Residences, a 63-storey apartment building in the Nation Towers complex on the Corniche, described by its website as the “pinnacle of affluence, elegance and comfort”, are seeking answers to what caused large amounts of water to flow from the 24th floor over the stairways, flooding common areas, spilling into their homes and bringing four main lifts to a halt.
A resident’s Facebook page shows video of tenants pushing puddles of water across the floors in the hallways. Another video shows piles of water spilling over the escape stairwell.
“It just cascaded through all the way down the building,” said one British tenant. “This is the lobby area, the main lobby of one of the floors, and there’s people literally just pushing water. This might be a lower floor, because it just cascaded down. So, there was water running down from above to the lifts. It’s just absolute chaos.”
One tenant said she awoke to the sound of running water just after 12.35am on Sunday, and believed it was coming from the 24th floor of the building, a part of the St Regis Abu Dhabi complex. A spokeswoman for St Regis said the hotel “has not witnessed any incident” and is fully operational.
“It wasn’t a leak, it was like raining on my staircase,” said the 36-year-old resident who lives in a two-storey loft in the building. “I was out of my room and I see this water, honestly, raining – the ceiling was raining water. The whole house was raining, the ceiling, on the staircase, in the bathroom, in the kitchen, in the salon, everything.”
The resident called security, which said it would send a maintenance crew to help clean up the water. As of Tuesday, she was still waiting.
“I can’t blame them because they don’t know what to do,” she said of the security guards. “That’s the only number we were provided, the security in the building.”
Abu Dhabi Police and Civil Defence were called, but the police were unable to help beyond maintaining an overnight presence outside the building.
Since Sunday, the tenants of floors 50 and below have had to share one service lift. But at least one regular lift was back in operation yesterday.
The flooding is the latest in a series of structural or electrical failures some residents say they have experienced since moving into the building after its opening last year.
One resident said she was recently jolted awake after a glass wall in her loft bedroom shattered at 6am, sending shards of glass over the living room.
Another resident described a blown fuse behind her washing machine that caught fire. And a resident complained of mould.
Complaints posted on the Facebook page point to regular flooding in the parking garage and of a foul smell in the upper storey apartments.
Residents say their complaints have been ignored by the company that manages the building, International Capital Trading (ICT). When asked to speak with the manager of the tower, one ICT employee said the manager no longer worked for the company and that his last day was Monday.
ICT said it would be about one week before the new manager would take over. An interim manager did not return an email or telephone calls.
The company’s lack of communication has residents concerned.
“These are the kind of issues that you wouldn’t expect in a building of this nature,” said a British resident. “Those kind of safety issues should already be addressed.”
rpennington@thenational.ae
