Barry Levitt, 80, was sitting with family members at a bakery on KKL Street in Jerusalem when a concrete balcony suddenly detached from the residential building above and crashed onto the seating area. Levitt was trapped beneath the rubble and was pronounced dead after being rescued. His wife and several other people were evacuated with minor injuries. An ordinary outing in the heart of Rehavia ended in a disaster that can no longer be dismissed as a minor defect in an old building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, about two weeks after the collapse, the Jerusalem Municipality has issued an urgent call for the inspection of cantilevered balconies in buildings constructed before 1980. But instead of presenting a citywide survey, a comprehensive inspection campaign or an emergency plan, the announcement shifts the spotlight to apartment owners: hire an engineer, pay for the inspection and repair the defects. In less sanitized language, the balcony may hang above a public street, but the responsibility remains inside the private home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The disaster is even more disturbing because, according to reports, a private engineer arrived at the building only hours before the collapse after worrying signs had been discovered and ordered treatment and temporary supports to be installed. The concrete did not wait for the professionals. The balcony collapsed before the work began, and police opened an investigation into the circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Jerusalem Municipality stated: \u201cThe Dangerous Buildings Department of the Jerusalem Municipality is calling on property owners in the city, particularly those holding and using cantilevered balconies in buildings constructed before 1980, to have their structural condition inspected. Under the law, responsibility for the proper maintenance of the building and its balconies rests with property owners and occupants. Property owners and occupants must examine the condition of the balconies under their responsibility, obtain suitable professional advice and take the necessary action if defects or concerns about structural failure are discovered.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jerusalem is currently being dug up from almost every direction: light rail construction, infrastructure work, bulldozers, heavy trucks and prolonged drilling. At this stage, no public finding has linked those projects to the balcony collapse on KKL Street, so it cannot be claimed that they caused it. But in aging buildings, some of which were constructed decades ago, the possible effects of vibrations, nearby construction and changes in the ground are engineering questions that must be examined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In California, responsibility for inspecting balconies also rests with building owners, but it does not remain merely a recommendation. After a balcony collapsed in Berkeley in 2015, killing six young people due to decay and water damage, mandatory periodic inspections by professionals were introduced, along with requirements to submit reports to the authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is the difference between assigning responsibility and creating an enforcement system: it is not enough to tell residents to inspect their balconies, the authorities must also make sure the inspections are actually carried out. Otherwise, thousands of old balconies across Jerusalem remain part of a deadly roulette, and the next victim may simply be sitting beneath the first one to fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Barry Levitt, 80, was sitting with family members at a bakery on KKL Street in Jerusalem when a concrete balcony suddenly detached from the residential building above and crashed onto the seating area. Levitt was trapped beneath the rubble and was pronounced dead after being rescued. His wife and several other people were evacuated with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":183902,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"9319","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[62,8730,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-8730","category-68"],"acf":{"subtitle":"After a deadly disaster in Jerusalem, the municipality is telling apartment owners to inspect their old balconies themselves, and the difficult questions are only beginning"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":183906,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183904\/revisions\/183906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}