Netanyahu orders meeting to probe couple’s deaths in flooded elevator
‘The hand of destiny is very harsh,’ says Dean Shoshani’s father; Stav Harari’s brother laments she bequeathed him role of eldest sibling without warning
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday that he had ordered a special meeting of rescue and emergency service officials to review how a couple died in a flooded elevator in Tel Aviv despite multiple calls to emergency services for their rescue.
In Saturday’s fatal flooding, officials said the elevator became stuck, possibly due to a power outage. Residents told Hebrew media they heard banging from the elevator and called police but rescue services took 30 to 60 minutes to arrive.
The victims were named on Sunday as Dean Yaakov Shoshani and Stav Harari, both 25.
“I spoke last night with the public security minister, the transportation minister, the Israel Police acting commissioner and the Fire and Rescue Service commissioner in a preliminary effort to clarify how this happened,” Netanyahu said at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.
“I asked PMO Acting Director General Ronen Peretz to convene a meeting today with all of the professional echelon in order to learn lessons so that such things do not recur.”
Tzion, Dean Shoshani’s father, told Hebrew media: “It is very hard, fathers don’t bury sons. Dean was charming, a great child, understanding. He always looked beyond.”
“We received Dean for 25 years and now we have returned him,” he said. “Such is life. Enjoy your time, enjoy your lives.”
Tzion said that Dean and Stav Harari were a couple for years.
“They lived together in this building,” he said. “The hand of destiny is very harsh.”
He said that neither the police nor the fire service had contacted the family so far, only representatives from the municipal welfare department.
Amit Harari, Stav’s brother, wrote on Facebook: “My older sister, light of the family, the most beautiful girl of all. I can’t believe that I am waking up to a morning without you. It is not an easy thing to absorb, simply a tragedy for the family. A girl who only did good. I don’t know how we will continue to live without you, you have left us with a wound that will never heal. ”
Stav, he wrote, had passed on to him the role of oldest sibling without preparing him. The family has another son.
A member of the Shoshani family on Sunday complained to media about the response from authorities since the deaths.
“How can it be that no one has spoken to the family yet?” the family member, who asked to remain anonymous, told Hebrew media. “No one from the police, or the municipality, came to say what happened.”
The family member claimed that infrastructure in the building had not been maintained.
“It is carelessness toward the residents of the neighborhood by the municipality, criminal negligence,” the family member said. “How could it take so long for the emergency services to arrive?”
Video published by Channel 12 news showed water rushing into the basement of the building, on Nadav Street in the Hatikvah neighborhood.
אסון המעלית | "ניסינו לפתוח עם 'לומים' את המעלית, לא הצלחנו. המים נסחפו פנימה והמעלית הוצפה": כך נראו רגעי ההצפה בזמן אמת. לסיפור המלא > https://t.co/2y9ldApj4S pic.twitter.com/QIjhIIcBcg
— החדשות – N12 (@N12News) January 5, 2020
Israel was lashed with torrential rain over the weekend. Fire and Emergency services said that they were overwhelmed with calls during the rain, which caused some calls to go unanswered.
Police have said they are investigating the elevator deaths.
Residents of working class south Tel Aviv and adjacent Jaffa, home to several Arab-majority neighborhoods, have long complained of neglect from city officials and others compared to better-off neighborhoods in north and central Tel Aviv.
Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai sent his condolences to the families of the drowning victims, but blamed the rapid rainfall, rather than the infrastructure, for the crisis.
“Yesterday, the rainfall levels were a once-in-50-year [event]. There is no drainage system in the world that can deal with this flow,” Huldai claimed in an interview with the Kan public broadcaster.
He said areas of south Tel Aviv received twice as much rain — some 80 millimeters — as other areas of the city during the storm.
A tenant in the building, identified only as Eli, told Army Radio Sunday that emergency services failed the victims. “I called 16 times and they hung up. It reminded me of a third-world country.”
“These people died in our hands,” he said. “We heard them struggling to exit, we couldn’t open the door. There was a moment when we stopped hearing them and we understood what had happened.”
A Tel Aviv-Jaffa city council member, Shula Keshet, called for a municipal commission to be form to investigate the city’s handling of the incident.
The Israel Fire and Rescue Services on Sunday issued instructions to the public on how to behave in the event of heavy rainfall and flooding. The service instructed the public to avoid entering subterranean areas and to not use elevators during flooding as they can short-circuit, trapping people inside. Even those with disabilities were advised to avoid using elevators until a heavy rainfall or flooding has passed.
The Times of Israel Community.