Yesterday afternoon, the Israeli television stations stopped regular broadcasting schedule and brought us the awful news of a major fatal construction collapse in Tel Aviv. A four-story parking garage totally collapsed.
Third body found in the Tel Aviv construction site collapse
The search for survivors continued Tuesday morning, with four construction workers still missing at the site of the collapse.Soldiers began a search and rescue operation on Monday afternoon with two victims successfully extracted by Monday evening.
Police received reports of a building collapse on the corner of Habarzel and Hanahoshet Streets at 11:24 a.m, on Monday, and responded within minutes.
Rescue workers continued working into the night in an effort to recover those who remained missing. (Jerusalem Post)
Apparently, the owners had decided to add a “minor” “design element” to the plan without properly checking engineering feasibilities/ramifications.
Building engineering is a very mathematical science. Add a floor to a house, or a garden to a roof, and you can easily have a disaster, like there was yesterday in Tel Aviv.
I kept seeing this deep sand-filled pit on television and wondered how it could have happened.
Where were the support pillars? How could it have happened? Apparently, the owner had decided to add a garden on top and like many of us, figured that “a garden doesn’t weigh much.” As the tractor brought in the soil, the entire structure collapsed like a house of cards. Because the truth is that the tractor and packed soil for a garden are much heavier than cars. And apparently, the garden hadn’t been in the original plans which the engineers had received and planned for.
Who will pay in the end? Construction workers were killed and injured because of this.
