Maccabiah bridge collapse

Maccabiah bridge collapse
Rescuers search for victims from Australia's athletic delegation shortly after the collapse of the pedestrian bridge into the Yarkon River.
Bridge collapse
Date:	July 14, 1997
Place:	Yarkon River, Tel Aviv, Israel
Cause:	Shoddy construction
Result:	4 Australian athletes killed, 60 injured

The Maccabiah bridge collapse was the catastrophic failure of a pedestrian bridge over the Yarkon River in Tel Aviv, Israel on July 14, 1997. The collapse of the temporary wooden structure killed four and injured 60 Australian athletes who were visiting Israel to participate in the Maccabiah Games. One athlete died in the collapse, three died afterwards due to infections caused by exposure to the polluted river water.

Five people, including the engineer who designed the bridge and the chair of the Tel Aviv Games Organising Committee, were later convicted of recklessly causing death and injury. The incident and subsequent inquiries were extensively reported on by the Australian media.

The Maccabiah Games, first staged in 1932, is an athletic event held every four years in Tel Aviv, Israel, to celebrate the Zionist Revolution, and to demonstrate the unity and athleticism of the Jewish people. The games include competitions for adults and for junior athletes aged 15 to 18, and are open to all Israelis and Jews from around the world.

The 15th Maccabiah Games, held in 1997 and billed as the third largest sporting event in the world, included 5,300 participants from 56 nations competing in 38 athletic events. The opening ceremony on July 14 at 8 p.m. (local time), held at Ramat Gan Stadium and designed to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the First Zionist Congress, was attended by 50,000 people and featured hundreds of dancers, dazzling sound and light displays, and was broadcast on Israeli television. As at past games, a temporary footbridge, 60 feet long and 18 feet wide, was constructed across the nearby Yarkon River to allow competitors to march into the stadium during the ceremony from an assembly area on the other side of the river.

As scheduled during the opening ceremony, the participating athletes, teamed with their respective national delegations, began to cross the bridge and enter the stadium in alphabetical order. The second nation to cross the bridge, following the Austrian team, consisted of the 373 members of the Australian delegation. As the Australian athletes, in parallel rows of six, crossed the river, the bridge's support beams at roughly mid-span snapped, plunging around 100 of the Australians eight metres into the river below. Several of the fallen were forcibly submerged in the 1.6-metre deep river by the weight of falling athletes above them.