The partner of a chemical engineer killed in a workplace accident at a refinery in the southern city of Ashdod said Sunday that negligence at the facility may have left the victims undiscovered for nearly an hour.
Nitzan Goichman and co-worker Irina Radchuk died during an inspection at the facility after an apparent gas tank malfunction, in an incident now under investigation. A post-mortem examination was conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv, and Goichman’s funeral was scheduled for later in the day in Ashdod.
“The level of negligence at the refinery is unbelievable,” Goichman’s partner, Ilan, said in an interview with ynet. “Both were connected to the same tank and both collapsed at once, from what we were told. There were other workers there, but no one looked into the room. There are no cameras, no fall-detection sensor, no alerts. She sent me a message at 9:35 saying she was going into the inspection. The worker who found them told me he got there at 10:51.”
Ilan explained that “it takes about 15 minutes to put on the suits. So let’s say the latest they entered the test was 10:00. They may have collapsed and lain there for 50 minutes until he passed by. Only if someone had been supervising or there had been a sensor could they have been saved. They didn’t even start the test.
“He couldn’t explain to me why there were no systems there, as if they never considered a scenario where both could collapse together. It’s completely insane. A totally unnecessary death. We’ve been through so much in Israel and in the end they died because of nonsense, because someone didn’t do their job. Even a car accident would have been preferable to this needless death, I have nothing to say.”
Ilan added: “If I understood correctly, Irina collapsed first and fell on Nitzan. That’s how they found them, with Nitzan on the floor and Irina on top of her. I can’t get it out of my head that maybe Nitzan tried to save her or catch her, but she suffocated and couldn’t get up.”
“We very much hope to set a funeral date today. Since Wednesday we didn’t know anything,” he said. “Even that day the refinery didn’t notify me something had happened. I got there only because a friend of Nitzan passed by and saw ambulances. She called friends inside and they told her something had happened in the lab. Other than her, no one called me, and no one called Irina’s husband either.”
According to him, they also did not contact the worker who found the two after they collapsed. “He tried to resuscitate them until the medical team arrived. I think about his trauma, poor guy. The next day he didn’t come to work and no one called him after two employees died in his hands. He told me he was shattered, that they were both his friends. Nitzan always told me the human treatment there was terrible.”
Ilan said, “My wife was the best mother you could ask for. Our children are 4, 8 and 10, and she was their whole world. Her whole life was family. She was like glue for the family, and for our whole building. She brought all the neighbors together. She always had a smile, and her dimples would sink into her cheeks.
“If you don’t die in this country from war or a terror attack, apparently no one cares. There are too many accidents everywhere, specifically at the refinery there are constant problems. Just a few days ago Nitzan told a friend, ‘We’re heading for disaster in this place.’”