One man was found dead after a sinkhole opened in a swimming pool and dragged him inside during his employer’s party in Israel.
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Authorities found the man’s body early Thursday afternoon in the town of Karmei Yousef and said the search took approximately four hours. According to The Times of Israel, Fire and Rescue services said the search effort had complications due to fears that tunnels branching out of the sinkhole could’ve caused another collapse.
Sinkhole opens up in the bottom of a swimming pool in Israel. Reports say one man was sucked in and died.pic.twitter.com/VBQbVrJnyp
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) July 21, 2022
Rescue officials also built a support structure to prevent the pool’s surface from collapsing before finding the victim’s body. A second man, aged 34, was almost dragged into the sinkhole but managed to climb and only suffered injuries to his lower body.
“About the second man who pulled himself out of the sinkhole, she said that only when the commotion on the spot calmed down did they hear him shouting “Save” from inside the sinkhole. He reassured us that he was fine. He was a little bruised. Luckily there were people from the company there who were able to go down and help him,” one of the witnesses said.
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She said the water level decreased, a hole opened up on the pool’s surface, and the victim was sucked in within seconds. Before the incident. Six people were swimming inside the pool, and another witness said she screamed at her colleagues to get out of the pool, but they assumed it was a game at first.
“A whirlpool was created in the pool. Something that didn’t seem normal, like removing the cork or opening the drain. Strange waves were created, all the water was pumped down, at first I didn’t see Where are they drawn to? They thought it was some kind of game by one of the people. Seconds after that, the ground just dropped there, which looked like a huge sinkhole. I saw two people who just disappeared. The initial instinct was to try to get in, but I also understood from people there who prevented me from entering that there was no option to go inside,”
Local police said they were investigating the victim’s death and determining if the pool has the proper licensing.
Some more info: It took hours to recover the body because the tunnel was unstable and they needed to send a dog in with a GoPro camera and then line the sides with some sort of stabilizing material. Potentially caused by slow water seepage over time destabilizing the soil. pic.twitter.com/E2MfowHdTo
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) July 21, 2022
Tel Aviv professor Shumel Marko said the sinkhole could’ve been caused by water seepage: “The fact that it happened under the pool raises the possibility that the cause of the sinkhole is water seepage. This is a human and not a geological phenomenon. When the water seeps, it can make room under the surface; if the ground is made of sand, the flow of water can turn it into mud Then, a cavity is created.”