Man survives as 15-ton metal pole falls from crane onto his car
Student Jonathan Deri, 24, hails ‘miracle’ after sustaining only minor injuries in crash on Tel Aviv’s Ayalon Highway
An iron cylinder unfastened Sunday from a crane and collapsed into a moving vehicle, but only mildly injured a 24-year-old man from Tel Aviv, in an incident hailed both by him and by medics as a “miracle.”
Dash camera footage from a vehicle driving down the Ayalon Highway captured the moment of the crash.
The footage depicts the moment the metal cargo, which had been connected to a crane at a building site adjacent to the highway, disconnected from the crane and slammed onto the highway.
The cylinder, which weighs 15 tons, smashed into the front of a car, injuring driver Jonathan Deri. Luckily, Deri was only lightly to moderately injured, sustaining bruising and cuts. Paramedics took him in stable condition to the city’s Ichilov hospital after the accident.
“We’re talking about a real miracle,” said Megan David Adom medic Eitan Gabra Sapir. “The vehicle that passed on the highway was hit by a large metal cylinder that fell from a large crane and hit the front part of the car. The driver, who was injured in the limbs was walking around, conscious.”
תיעוד: נפילת תשתית הברזל אתמול על רכב בנתיבי איילון. ג'ונתן דרעי בן 24 נפצע באורח קל- בינוני באירוע שיכול היה להסתיים באסון. תיעוד: החדשות החמות@ynetalerts pic.twitter.com/URNrs4uQ0Z
— איתי בלומנטל Itay Blumental (@ItayBlumental) March 15, 2021
Deri, still in the emergency room, told Channel 12 new: “I was driving down the street and suddenly I heard a big ‘boom,’ and I found myself with scratches, cuts on my hands, and blood.
“Only later did I understand that a huge pole weighing around 15 tons disconnected from a crane and fell directly on my vehicle. Now I have really bad back pain. But what happened to me was a miracle. I still can’t digest what happened, because I could have died.”
“This is a day where I have to say a blessing. It shows how much luck I had, and how fragile life is. Next time I see a crane, I will check and make sure there’s nothing above me.”
Two years ago, four workers were killed when a crane collapsed at a construction site in Yavne. The incident brought renewed attention to the issue of worker safety, with politicians, activists and others issuing urgent calls for reforms in the industry and better safety standards and enforcement.
In 2020, the Haaretz daily reported that work accident deaths in Israel had increased by 56 percent since 2018.
