Parked cars damaged by a “chapiteau” in Champs de Mars

Update 26 April 2017 :

A police officer from Pope Henessy Police Station called me today to ask about the case. I informed him that I came to an agreement with the Port Louis Tennis Club with which I have been able to get the money back for the car repairs. I just came back from the Police Station whereby I had to sign the above statement to confirm that I do not wish to go forward with the case anymore. [Click here for Facebook post link]

*End of update*

Never assume that your car is safe, not even in a paid parking! I even wrote a post on those disclaimers some time back. If you follow me on Facebook, you already know part of the story. Some pictures below and if you want to read the full story, just continue reading to the full article.

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The full story

If you follow me on Facebook, you probably laughed when I posted the picture with the caption:

I’m currently in a bus heading towards Port Louis, and seated in the 2 seats on the left side. The sandal of a man, seated at the other end, on the right side is slowly slipping and nearly reached my shoe. What should I do? LOL.

Though it looked funny (and I admit that it was damn funny especially when I tried to take a discrete picture with my mobile phone), I was quite tensed. Right at that moment, I left an off-site training at Phoenix in a haste to take a bus to Port Louis when I got a call that a chapiteau (tent) damaged my car in the parking.

On reaching the parking of the Port Louis Tennis Club, the police was already examining the scene. A chapiteau which was installed some 10 meters from the cars flew directly on 3 of them, thus causing considerable damage.

And as you guess by now, one of the cars was mine and like all of the other drivers, we paid a monthly fee for keeping our cars there during working days.

The damages to my car:

Damages to the two other cars:

The chapiteau

After hearing the different persons involved, the story timeline can be written as :

• Contractor 1 places ChapiteauA (seen damaged, lying on the ground) on Friday.
• Cars are parked early this morning, everything is normal.
• Contractor 2 arrives on the parking after 9-10am and removes ChapiteauA from its initial position before installing their own tent. This first consists of removing those safety straps which hold the structure firmly on the ground and then, place it by the side. This was done without prior authorization of Contractor1
• With the heavy gusts of wind blowing, the ChapiteauA was thrown up in the air and landed on three of the cars parked. In addition to the damages to the cars, the iron/aluminium structure of the chapiteau got damaged too.

The rest of the story…

The Contractor1 was contacted and required to give his statement, especially the part where his permission was not given to manipulate his structure. Contractor2 was unreachable to give any explanations. As for the damaged cars, one of the drivers and myself wrote our complaints in the Police Station of Pope Henessy. A police examiner was called on the spot to (of course,) examine the damaged vehicles so that we could drive with our cars back home. We reached the police station shortly before 2 pm and left it nearly 2 hours later, with a free ride in the police vehicle (without being accused of any rape, thief or murder) lol.

Now, the insurance companies need to be contacted and procedures followed to get the cars repaired while the police carries out its inquiry to determine the responsibilities of the different parties.

To end, I do not know for how long I can remain car-less or get reimbursed (if any!!!). Meanwhile my transport will now be nooooooooooooo -> The bus!