Deadly Jaffa explosion and fire said caused by illegal gas cylinder

An explosion in Jaffa that claimed the lives of at least three people and injured four on Monday night was likely caused by an illegal gas cylinder attached to the building without proper safety measures and inspections, the Tel Aviv Fire and Rescue Service said Tuesday.

“It is very likely that there was a gas [cylinder] installed illegally and improperly here,” according to Deputy Commissioner Doron Netanel, head of the fire service’s Tel Aviv regional station.

While the investigation is only beginning, Netanel said it was likely the cylinder was “a powder keg” waiting to go off.

The illegal cylinder was placed just outside a paint store, on Yefet Street in the southern Tel Aviv neighborhood, that was itself improperly registered and did not meet fire codes for a business containing highly flammable supplies.

“The first stage [in fighting the fire] was to get control of the flames,” Netanel said of the overnight efforts to put out the blaze, according to Hadashot news (formerly Channel 2). “But the flames were huge, and there was a blanket of smoke. There were secondary explosions from paint and paint thinner.”

Nearby stores were not harmed, Netanel said, because “the shockwave was pushed out [the back of the store] to a garden. Engineers were brought in to check and make sure of that.”

The blast completely leveled the one-story building containing the store.

Police said early Tuesday that the bodies were found in the rubble after firefighters managed to extinguish the blaze.

Two of the dead were identified on Tuesday as Rimon Huri of Jaffa and Ali Abu Jama from Taibe.

According to the Magen David Adom rescue service, five people were injured, including one who was suffering from severe burns, medics said. The injured were taken to the hospital and several others were treated for shock. Two of the lightly injured were passengers in a car that drove by the building during the explosion.

MDA still had teams on hand at the scene in case further victims of the explosion are found as crews remove rubble.

Six firefighting teams were called in to battle the blaze shortly after the explosion was reported.

Medics at the scene said that they had been unable to approach the building as the fire raged, and that several rescue teams were there, including one from the army’s Home Front Command.

Video from the scene showed the building completely destroyed as a large fire raged.

תיעוד ממקום קריסת הבניין ביפו – הבניין ככל הנראה לא שימש למגורים pic.twitter.com/M5noHnBp6k

— חדשות 13 (@newsisrael13) November 27, 2017

BREAKING: House explosion in the Jaffa area of Tel Aviv, Israel, cause as of now unknown, a number of people are trapped, huge emergency service response. pic.twitter.com/VadSXf0PHP

— News_Executive (@News_Executive) November 27, 2017