Comment on this story
comment
A man in central Israel was killed Thursday after a sinkhole opened up under a swimming pool during a house party for co-workers, sucking him into a 43-foot-deep hole.
Rescue crews responded to a villa in the town of Karmei Yosef, about 25 miles from Tel Aviv, which was hosting a company event. Video of the incident shows a sinkhole opening up Thursday afternoon, causing the pool to cave in and cave in while guests were in and around the pool. All the water, inflatables and toys were sucked into the big hole in seconds.
Two men were seen being dragged into the sinkhole as party-goers looked on in horror and shock as dance music played poolside. While one of the men managed to get out after falling, the other is seen on video submerged underwater and trying to escape the vortex. Then he disappeared into the sinkhole.
An unusual event in Keremi Yosef: a sinkhole opens in the pool, one person is missing. More details below >> (use under copyright section 27a) pic.twitter.com/JtWn91G3Sc
— Israel Hayom (@IsraelHayomHeb) July 21, 2022
After a four-hour search, first responders were able to find the man at the bottom of the sinkhole. The man, who was pronounced dead, was identified as Klil Kimhi, 32, of Tel Aviv, according to the Times of Israel. Authorities have not released Kimhi’s cause of death.
The couple who owned the property were arrested on suspicion of aggravated murder. Police say the couple, identified by Israeli media as Natan and Rachel Meller, did not apply for a permit before building the pool. At a hearing Friday, Sgt. Rami Desta accused the couple of making “a big contribution to this tragic outcome”.
“They could have avoided this outcome if they had obtained a permit,” Desta said, according to Israeli news site Ynet.
The Mellers were released Friday morning under house arrest at their daughter’s home in Petah Tikva.
Zion Amir, the couple’s attorney, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. He defended his clients as “good people” during Friday’s hearing, noting that they could not have foreseen a hole opening under their pool.
“This is a very unusual event,” he said, according to Ynet.
Boreholes are areas of land that lack natural drainage from the external surface, according to the United States Geological Survey. Caverns and caverns can develop underground as rocks beneath the earth’s surfaces, such as limestone, carbonate rocks, or salt beds, dissolve. One of the reasons sinkholes can be so spectacular is because a sudden collapse of the Earth’s surface can occur at any time, according to the USGS.
In the United States, most damage from sinkholes tends to occur in states like Florida, Texas, Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, according to the USGS. Just this week, video captured a New York City van falling into a sinkhole in the Bronx.
Sinkholes are also a problem in Israel. Ittai Gavrieli, a senior researcher at the Geological Institute of Israel, told Agence France-Presse last year that there were thousands of sinkholes in and around Israel, including the shores of the Dead Sea.
About 50 people were at the house party on Thursday, according to the Times of Israel. One guest told the Keshet 12 television station that everything happened so quickly that it was not immediately clear what was unfolding in front of them.
“The water level suddenly started receding and a hole opened up, creating a vortex that swept two people inside,” he said.
Aviv Bublil, the lifeguard working at the pool party, told Ynet how “the floor just fell in.”
“I saw two people … two people were missing,” Bublil said.
The 34-year-old man who emerged from the sinkhole suffered minor injuries to his head and legs, Magen David Adom paramedic Uri Damari told the Jerusalem Post.
Photos shared by authorities show how the giant sinkhole tore through the middle of the pool.
On social media, friends are flooding Kimhi’s Facebook page with memories.
“May his memory be a blessing,” the Israel Hayom newspaper wrote on its Facebook account.
On Friday, Amir, the lawyer for the pool’s owners, stressed to the audience that the fatal sinkhole incident was “a terrible tragedy” that was “no less unusual than lightning.”
“Something like this happens once every hundred years,” Amir said, according to Ynet. “And unfortunately it happened.”