In an instant, hundreds disappear

Posted: Saturday, May 26, 2001


At least 24 people were killed and more than 300 injured in the collapse of the Versailles banquet hall - the deadliest building collapse in Israel's history. A wedding video that captured the tragedy was broadcast again and again on television Friday.

Four people - the building owner, an engineer, a designer and a contractor - were arrested Friday, police said. Israel TV's Channel Two said an initial inquiry pointed to negligence and an attempted cover-up.

Assi and Keren Sror had just become husband and wife and many of their 600 guests had streamed on the dance floor late Thursday for the traditional dancing common at Jewish weddings.

Video footage showed joyous guests dancing on one another's shoulders, kissing the bride and groom after Assi smashed a glass under his foot marking the traditional end of the ceremony and start of the party.

Suddenly, the floor buckled underneath them and the dancers disappeared, plunging three stories into a heap of rubble that billowed gray smoke and sparks. Screaming guests on the edges scrambled for safety or peered down into the crater in disbelief. Later, some would say they had felt a tremor just before the collapse.

The video footage, shot by wedding videographer David Amromin, showed a wide-eyed little girl in a frilly white dress being held aloft in her father's arms seconds before the collapse. She survived and was seen in subsequent footage with cuts and bruises on her face.

The tape showed one man scooping up a little girl in the mayhem. One elderly man walked right up to the large hole, and was resolutely pulled back by a woman.

On the edges of the crater, where survivors grasped their heads in shock, the round black-topped tables were eerily unscathed, wine glasses and bottles of mineral water and soda still standing.

"I did not understand what happened at all at first," Amromin said of his decision to keep filming. "I did not know what I was doing or where I was. I was in another world."

Two of Amromin's colleagues, another video cameraman and a still photographer, were plunged into the crater.

Neither man was seriously injured.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who called the accident a "national disaster," said he would convene a special Cabinet meeting to consider launching an official commission of inquiry.

"This was a shocking incident, one of the most difficult that occurred in Israel," Sharon said after inspecting the scene.

By Friday evening, the death toll had reached 24, including a 3-year-old boy, as body after body was pulled from the rubble.

Dozens of people were missing, said army spokesman Lt. Olivier Rafowicz, and the death toll was expected to rise.

In all, 309 people were hospitalized, said Maj. Gen. Gabi Ofir, who was in charge of the rescue operation. Doctors said they treated many children.

Among the injured were the newlyweds. Assi Sror was treated for minor injuries and released.

His wife, carried out on a stretcher in her beaded, fluffy white dress, suffered hip and chest injuries and underwent surgery.

Alisa Sror, the bridegroom's mother, said she had just congratulated her son and sent him off to dance with his bride when the floor swallowed up the revelers.

"The wall collapsed on them, the floor, the tables," she said from her hospital bed.

The Palestinian Authority expressed its "deep sorrow" to the Israeli government.