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At 22:45 on the evening of Thursday, 24 May 2001, the floor of the Versailles Hall, a catering establishment in Jerusalem, collapsed during a wedding celebration. Hundreds were injured, and 23 people lost their lives.
Several minutes after the accident (the worst civilian disaster in Israeli history) Channel 2 television broadcasts were interrupted with a special news bulletin. After several more interruptions, disaster coverage finally replaced regular broadcasts. Reports concentrated on what happened and the condition of those injured. Only after more than an hour was the issue of fatalities raised.
The Jerusalem Post was one of the first newspapers to close its Friday morning paper, and even in a second edition (very rare in Israel) only one relatively short article was dedicated to the disaster. Significantly, a subtitle mentioned 13 dead, a statistic not reported by some other papers with later deadlines. Thrust of the coverage was the rescue effort, except for a statement by the Jerusalem police chief that the cause was "an engineering fault," and not terrorism. The elimination of terrorism as a cause is certainly within the police domain, however in retrospect it seems rash to report an engineering fault, since even ten days later the exact causes) has not been determined and is the subject of investigation.
Yediot Aharonot, the largest selling Israeli daily, dedicated its entire front page news coverage to the disaster under the headline, "Disaster at a wedding: hundreds injured." Graphic pictures, on page one and also on page two, brought home the gruesome reality of what had happened. The relatively short textual coverage, only on page two, stressed what was known about the disaster and the rescue response. Again, the Jerusalem police chief was quoted, but this time with the caveat that "although it is too early to know, the cause was apparently ..." Contact telephone numbers were given to help the public search for missing persons.