Names of three Yavne crane collapse victims released

Two other lightly injured workers were stuck on the crane and safely brought back to the ground.

The scene in Yavne where part of the crane collapsed (photo credit: MDA)
The scene in Yavne where part of the crane collapsed
(photo credit: MDA)
Ben Daklo, a 22-year-old resident of Ramat Gan, and Yonatan Sebag, a 33-year-old Or Yehuda resident, were named on Monday as two of the four victims of Sunday’s fatal crane collapse in Yavne.
 
Fifty-one-year-old Hadera resident Gil Hazazi was the first victim to be named late Sunday, leaving behind a wife and three children. The name of the fourth victim is yet to be published.
 
On Sunday morning, the four workers were killed at a residential construction site when the rear section of a crane collapsed and concrete counterweights crashed to the ground.
 
Three workers were found dead on the ground by rescue workers when they arrived. An Israeli crane operator was pronounced dead after rescue workers retrieved his body, which was hanging from the crane wreckage.
 
Two other lightly injured workers were stuck on the crane and safely brought back to the ground.
 
“Twenty-two-year-old Ben Deklo, a resident of the city, is one of the people killed in the crane disaster in Yavne – may his memory be a blessing,” wrote Ramat Gan Mayor Carmel Sharma-Hacohen on Facebook.
 
“The landscape of Ramat Gan is full of cranes, so I have instructed the city engineer to sharpen, focus and increase her supervision over them, and draw the attention of the Labor Ministry to oversee elements under its remit.”
 
The Labor Ministry said that another worker, truck driver Yitzhak Cohen, was electrocuted to death at the same construction site last month.
 
On Sunday, the Lahav 433 National Crime Unit’s “Peles” division for investigating work accidents – a joint unit of the Israel Police and the Labor Ministry – interviewed 17 individuals connected to the construction site, 11 of whom were interviewed under caution.
Four of those interviewed were placed under house arrest for five days, and the others were released.
 
On Monday, police summoned the owners of the company contracted to carry out the work at the construction site for a hearing, and issued an immediate 30-day closure notice for the site. 

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After an emergency meeting on Monday, Histadrut Labor Union chairman Arnon Bar-David and Israel Builders Association president Raul Srugo said they would be declaring 2019-2020 as the year of “construction site safety.”
 
“The tragic incidents in the construction industry are not a divine decree,” said Bar-David and Srugo in a joint statement.
 
“By working together, it will be possible to dramatically reduce the number of casualties caused by work accidents at construction sites. The government, employers and employees should join together to combat this safety crisis.”
 
Since the beginning of the year, 19 construction workers have been killed and 68 have been injured, 11 severely.