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Flood Fatalities Rise To 4: Young Couple Drowns In Flooded Elevator In South Tel Aviv, 2 Swept Away In Cars


Dean Shoshani and Stav Harari, both in their 20s, drowned in a flooded elevator on the basement level of a residential building in south Tel Aviv on Shabbos.

The entire Gush Dan area was deluged with extremely stormy weather on Shabbos and received copious amounts of rain. The couple was in the elevator on the basement level of the building when it short-circuited and filled up with rainwater.

Building residents heard knocking and called rescue services. However, due to the stormy weather conditions, the rescue services, which received thousands of calls that day, took at least a half-hour to an hour to arrive.

Upon arrival, the rescue services found the building’s parking area and lobby completely flooded and could not access the area. They confirmed that there were trapped persons in the elevator who did not respond to their calls and called for back-up.

Specialized rescue units were dispatched to the scene including a scuba diving team. The rescue operation was extremely complex and was performed in murky water with zero visibility. It took the team over an hour to extricate the first trapped person and over another hour to extricate the second trapped person. Both were evacuated in critical condition to the hospital and were pronounced dead upon arrival.

On Sunday, Eran Herrnstadt, a 72-year-old resident of Binyamina, a coastal town in the Haifa district, was killed in a flash flood when the road he was driving on suddenly flooded. He was found dead in his car by rescue workers

Another man, Ali Agbaria, 47, a resident of the northern Israeli-Arab town of Ar’ara, was found dead next to his overturned car in a flooded stream on early Monday morning after being reported missing on Sunday afternoon.

Agbaria and his 27-year-old son were caught in a flash flood outside Zichron Yaakov and tried to jump out of the car as it was being swept away. The son managed to escape the car but his father was swept away inside the car into a flooded wadi. The son alerted rescue services and searches were conducted late into the night and resumed early in the morning when the car and Agbaria’s body were finally found.

 

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerussalem)



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