After Shaare Zedek parking lot sinkhole disaster, are more on the way?

After a sinkhole swallowed cars in a Jerusalem parking lot on Monday, city planners are wondering if more disasters of this type could happen.

On Monday afternoon, a portion of the parking lot at Shaare Zedek Medical Center collapsed into a giant sinkhole. Seven cars were damaged in the incident, but no people were trapped or injured.

Footage from a security camera showed the moment three cars suddenly fell into the ground, without prior warning.

The cause of the collapse is still unknown. There are concerns that the disaster may be linked with the nearby excavation of underground tunnels for Highway 16, which is being built to provide an additional entrance to the city through the Motza interchange and is expected to open in 2023.

It includes several kilometers of underground tunnels stretching from the Har Nof neighborhood down Shmuel Bait Street toward the Givat Mordechai intersection, and it runs underneath the area of the hospital.

The Jerusalem Municipality, Home Front Command and representatives of the Shapir engineering company, under the supervision of the city engineer, are conducting comprehensive inspections of the grounds of the area, the municipality said. Testing will be conducted at a high professional level and be completed as quickly as possible, it said.

However, the collapse may be “the tip of the iceberg” of a series of impending sinkholes that may result from insufficient drainage that can cause water to accumulate, Yediot Aharonot quoted a private engineer as saying. The tunnels also run underneath the nearby training facility of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team, the report said.

Shaare Zedek on Tuesday said its building’s structure was completely safe, and all services were being provided as normal.

Traffic in front of the hospital was heavy, and incoming patients were being redirected to the southern entrance of the hospital. The public was asked to use public transportation to reach the hospital when possible to avoid excessive traffic.

In April, Shaare Zedek opened a new seven-story underground parking lot with 800 parking spots. The hospital, which employs some 5,000 workers and cares for hundreds of thousands of patients a year, has long been seen as having insufficient parking available.