Fuad a-Said, the brother of 20-year-old tractor operator Abed a-Said who was injured in Monday's Tel Aviv parking collapse ,spoke out in defense of his brother. "Abed is not a foreman, he's a tractor operator who does what he's told. What happened is the managers' responsibility, not his," said Fuad.
Currently, the evidence at the site shows that the tractor was driven up to the parking complex's roof, and that a few seconds later the structure collapsed. So far, the names of the three people confirmed to have been killed have been released. They are Iyad Rimawi (34) from Beit Rima, Ukranian citizen Dennis Dyachenko (28) and Oleg Yakubov (60) from Tel Aviv.
- Abed a-Said was released from the hospital on Tuesday and said that he has no recollection of the crash. "I woke up in the driver's seat in the tractor and saw the Magen David Adom paramedics," he said. "They asked if I was okay, but nothing was okay. I was stunned, my entire body hurt and I thought I was in a dream."
A-Said also stated that he did not feel that there was any danger regarding the structural soundness of the parking complex while construction was underway. "If it were dangerous, I wouldn't have worked there," he said. "I did what my superior told me, I'm not an engineer."
A-Said recalled a previous malfunction at the site that was successfully remedied. "Eight months ago, I was working downstairs, digging on the bottom floor. There was an issue with water entering from the Yarkon River, so they brought in pumps to remove it. I felt like it was taken care of by people who knew what they were doing."
Though he does not remember the exact moment of the crash, a-Said does remember the moments leading up to it. "At about 11:30, I stopped the tractor and was about to climb out of it and eat. All of a sudden, I felt a strong shake and boom, everything fell, with me still in the tractor. I don't remember what happened afterward or how long I was down there, only that Magen David Adom came and rescued me. I'm still in pain, but Allah willing, it will be okay."
Abed's brother Fuad received word of his brother's injury from the paramedic team. "I called him a few seconds after it had happened, and they told me he was hurt," said Fuad. "What happened was the foremen's responsibility, not the workers'. It has nothing to do with the tractor. My brother wasn't building the building, he manned the tractor and did what the foreman told him. He was only working there for a month and a half."
"The Police needs to investigate everyone who was there and figure out the root of the problem," added Fuad. "Maybe it was the iron, maybe the cement, maybe it was negligence on the job. No one knows yet. It could have ended very differently if the parking complex had already opened and had a 100 cars or people in it."
Currently, the Police are looking into the possibility that the building plans were not structurally sound, or that they were carried out in a negligent manner, which lead to the subsequent collapse and disaster. A preliminary investigation pointed to a structural flaw that prevented the parking complex from being able to withstand the weight of a particularly heavy vehicle like the tractor. At present, it is the building's design, and not the on-site managing, that is suspected of being the cause of the collapse.