Accessibility advocate killed in Kfar Saba crane collapse

A 52-year-old woman was killed Sunday when part of a crane fell from a building site onto her car in Kfar Saba, north of Tel Aviv.

The woman was identified late Sunday as Netta Rotman, a top official in Access Israel, a disability rights and advocacy group.

Rotman, 52, headed the group’s accessibility counseling department.

Paramedics called to the scene attempted to resuscitate Rotman, but were forced to pronounce her dead. Firefighters had to remove her body from the wreckage before it could be taken to the morgue.

Rotman was leaving the parking lot in the city’s Sharona Mall when the crane from a nearby building site fell on her vehicle, just a few meters from the mall, crushing it.

The site manager, its safety manager and the crane operator were detained by police for questioning.

Reuven Ben Shimon, founder of the Forum for the Prevention of Work Accidents, posted that as with previous fatalities in similar circumstances, “the writing was on the wall.”

According to a Facebook group documenting accidents at building sites, before Sunday’s accident, six workers had been killed on construction sites since the beginning of 2018.

In September 2016, six construction workers were killed when a four-story parking garage being built in the northern Tel Aviv neighborhood of Ramat Hahayal collapsed.

Following the fatal accident, lawmakers renewed calls to improve safety standards at construction sites and set up a parliamentary inquiry into construction workers’ deaths in such accidents.