The body of a 30-year old man was found on Thursday after he was sucked into a sinkhole that appeared in a pool during an office party.
In an hours-long operation, teams climbed into the hole with a rescue dog who had a camera attached to its body, in an attempt to reach the man and extract him as quickly as possible.
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An ambulance outside a pool where a man lost his life after being dragged into a sinkhole on Thursday, in central Israel
(Photo: Israel FIre and Rescue Services)
The sinkhole appeared suddenly, while employees of a company were attending the pool party at a villa in the town of Karmei Yosef.
A number of people were in the water with mattresses and other equipment when the sinkhole opened up.
Sinkhole appears in a pool in central Israel
The sinkhole quickly swallowed water, pool mattresses and other materials as the man disappeared into it to the shock and amazement of his friends, who were unable to help.
A second man who was also being carried away by the water, was saved and taken to an area hospital, suffering mild injuries.
A member of the rescue team said the tunnels underneath the venue and its pool were under risk of collapse and had to be reinforced as part of the efforts to locate the man.
"The extraction was complicated and hard on the team," one of the rescuers said. "The tunnels underneath the structure diverged into smaller tunnels, which could compromise the integrity of the building," he said.
Professor Shmuel Marco, from the Tel Aviv University geophysics department, said he believed the sinkhole was not the result of a geological fault, but of bad planning.
"It is likely that water seeped underneath the pool and eroded the ground that was there," he said. "There are no known natural sinkholes in that area," he said.
"The fact that a sinkhole appeared precisely bellow the pool indicates it was a man-made occurrence and that the water that leaked from the pool caused the ground to become muddy and for a hole to appear," he said.