J'lem: Top floor of building collapses, 2 injured

Floor of building under construction collapses in haredi neighborhood; worker suffers broken leg, 1 other injured.

By MELANIE LIDMAN
Building collapses in Jerusalem neighborhood Geula 370 (photo credit: Yitzhak Ashraf Jerusalem MDA)
Building collapses in Jerusalem neighborhood Geula 370
(photo credit: Yitzhak Ashraf Jerusalem MDA)
The top floor of a building under construction in the haredi neighborhood of Geula in Jerusalem collapsed on Monday morning, injuring two workers.
One worker suffered a broken leg and the other was moderately injured. Immediately after the collapse, firefighters searched the building but did not find anyone trapped inside.
As is typical with incidents in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, thousands of curious onlookers gathered around the site of the accident, forcing police to call in larger forces for crowd control.
Police detained the foreman of the project for questioning. Traffic was closed on Malchei Yisrael Street, the site of the collapse, for a number of hours after the incident at 11:30 a.m.
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat arrived to inspect the damage. According to eyewitnesses, the building began to sway very slowly before it collapsed, allowing most of the people to clear away from the site before the top part of the building came crashing down.