In 2022, Israelis selected as their “word of the year” the term “sinkhole,” a nod to the high-profile incidents in the recent past during which the earth seemed to spontaneously open up, swallowing any humans and objects nearby.
The latest Israeli to experience this phenomenon up close and personal is 70-year-old Chaim Boaron, whose car was sucked into a massive sinkhole in the center of the country over the weekend.
“I was driving the car, I saw a small half-meter hole and then I got scared because there was a flood. Everything happened in an instant. The front wheels fell in. Within 20 seconds…the car sank and sank, if I hadn’t run away I would be dead now.”
Boaron added, “I can’t believe what a great miracle happened to me, a real miracle. A pipe exploded here and my life was miraculously saved."
The incident occurred a mere two months after another sinkhole opened in Hod Hasharon in a parking lot of a residential building. The cause of that sinkhole was identified as maintenance work nearby.
In June 2022, a massive sinkhole opened up in Jerusalem, swallowing cars in the parking lot of the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.
In July 2022, an Israeli was killed when a sinkhole opened up under a swimming pool in Karmei Yosef. In September and November 2022, sinkholes opened up on Tel Aviv’s Ayalon Highway.