Two men were shown being dragged into the sinkhole as partygoers watched in horror and shock while dance music played poolside. While one of the men managed to climb out after falling down, the other is seen on video submerged underneath the water and attempting to escape the vortex. He then disappeared into the sinkhole.
אירוע חריג בכרמי יוסף: בולען נפער בבריכה, אדם אחד נעדר.
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(שימוש על פי סעיף 27א’ לזכויות יוצרים) pic.twitter.com/JtWn91G3Sc— ישראל היום (@IsraelHayomHeb) July 21, 2022
After a four-hour search, first-responders were able to find the man at the bottom of the sinkhole — Klil Kimhi, 32, of Tel Aviv — who was pronounced dead, according to the Times of Israel. Authorities have not revealed Kimhi’s cause of death.
The couple who owns the property was arrested on suspicion of negligent manslaughter. Police say the couple, identified by Israeli media as Natan and Rachel Meller, did not apply for a permit before building the pool. At a Friday hearing, Sgt. Rami Desta accused the couple of playing “a very large contribution to this tragic outcome.”
“They could have prevented this outcome if they had gotten a permit,” said Desta, according to the Israeli news site Ynet.
The Mellers were released Friday morning on house arrest to their daughter’s house in Petah Tikva.
Zion Amir, the couple’s attorney, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. He defended his clients as “good people” during Friday’s hearing and outlined that they could not have anticipated a sinkhole to open under their swimming pool.
“This is a very unusual event,” he said, according to Ynet.
Sinkholes are areas of ground that lack natural external surface drainage, according to the United States Geological Survey. Spaces and caverns can develop underground as rock below the land surfaces, such as limestone, carbonate rock or salt beds, dissolve. One of the reasons sinkholes can be so dramatic is because a sudden collapse of the land surface can occur at any time, according to USGS.
In the United States, the most damage from sinkholes tends to occur in states such as Florida, Texas, Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, the USGS says. Just this week, video captured a New York City van falling into a sinkhole in the Bronx.
Sinkholes are also an issue in Israel. Ittai Gavrieli, a senior researcher with the Israel Geological Institute told, Agence France-Presse last year that there were thousands of sinkholes in and around Israel, including around the shores of the Dead Sea.
Roughly 50 people were at the house party Thursday, according to the Times of Israel. One guest told Keshet 12 that everything happened so fast, and that it wasn’t immediately clear what was unfolding before them.
“The water level suddenly started receding and a hole opened up, creating a vortex that swept two people inside,” she said.
Aviv Bublil, the lifeguard who worked at the pool party, recounted to Ynet how “the ground just dropped.”
“I saw two people … two people were missing,” Bublil said.
The 34-year-old man who climbed out of the sinkhole suffered minor injuries to his head and legs, Magen David Adom paramedic Uri Damari told the Jerusalem Post.
Photos shared by authorities show how the giant sinkhole ripped through the middle of the pool.
On social media, friends are flooding Kimhi’s Facebook page with remembrances.
“May his memory be a blessing,” the Israel Hayom newspaper wrote on its Facebook account.
On Friday, Amir, the attorney for the homeowners with the pool, emphasized at the hearing that the fatal sinkhole incident was “a terrible tragedy” that was “no less unusual than a lightning strike.”
“Such a thing happens once in a hundred years,” Amir said, according to Ynet. “And it unfortunately happened.”
