Workers say they felt rumblings ahead of collapse, as probe opens

Workers at a parking garage under construction in Tel Aviv said they felt the building shake in the hours before it collapsed, as investigators began looking for clues into what led to the deadly cave-in.

The garage was set to open in three weeks, the site’s work manager told news site Ynet.

Instead, the four-story parking garage collapsed on itself Monday morning, killing at least two workers and injuring 24 more, with another seven people feared buried underneath.

A preliminary investigation found that the collapse was likely due to an engineering fault rather than a safety failure, Channel 2 news reported.

The probe is being carried out by the police and the Labor Ministry’s safety division. At the request of police, a court placed a gag order on aspects of the investigation into why the cave-in occurred.

The site manager said a floor cleaning machine which was working on the site Monday morning had caused the floors to shake and that he had mentioned this to the projects director.

“During the morning, there was a machine which cleaned the floors and every time it passed us, we felt the floor shake. It didn’t seem good. I told the projects director that the way it was shaking felt a little unhealthy,” he said.

“An hour hadn’t passed before the building collapsed.”

“We heard a huge boom behind us and a very strong blast threw us onto a wall opposite,” he added.

Another construction worker from the site said he was underground in the garage when he began to feel vibrations.

“All of a sudden everything collapsed,” the man, identified only as Micha, told Channel 10 TV. “It was scary. You feel like everything is going to collapse, and you are going with it.”

Africa Israel Investments, whose subsidiary Danya Cebus operated the construction site, says it is investigating the cause of the collapse.

“During construction work on the Habarzel [Street] parking garage in Ramat Hahayal by Danya Cebus, parts of the garage collapsed,” Africa Israel said in a statement. “The company is currently investigating the reasons for the collapse as well as its results and repercussions.”

“At the moment, Danya Cebus and Africa Israel Investments are devoting all of their efforts to providing a quick response at the scene and are focusing on treating the casualties in this severe incident.”

Seven people are still missing at the site in Ramat Hahayal in northern Tel Aviv. Some 100 rescuers were in a race against time Monday afternoon to reach the missing people.

Rescue officials told Channel 2 that the construction workers buried at the scene of the collapse were four floors below ground level and that efforts to reach them could take days.

The dead and injured were all Palestinian men, according to Palestinian reports.

The IDF’s Home Front Command said the location of one of the seven had been located and the other six were being “assessed and monitored.”

Channel 2 reported that government inspectors visited the site in Tel Aviv in June and did not notice anything amiss.

Still, the company running the site, Africa Israel Investments subsidiary Danya Cebus, has been linked in recent years to a string of safety violations at its construction sites, the report says.

Danya Cebus construction sites reportedly have seen three other accidents this year, including one in which a 17-year-old worker fell and was injured because he wasn’t wearing a harness.

The report says three investigations were opened against the company in recent years.

The rate of worker deaths in Israel is among the highest in the West and double the European Union average, according to the findings of an Economy Ministry and National Insurance Institute report published in May.

AP contributed to this report