TEL AVIV – A man fell off of a fourth floor balcony on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Succoth, but a neighbor’s sukkah broke the fall and likely saved his life, Jerusalem paramedics said.
The 24-year-old from Jerusalem was building a sukkah on his balcony when he leaned on a glass wall that gave way.
The man crashed into his neighbor’s sukkah on the ground floor.
Magen David Adom paramedic Netanel Lifshitz told Channel 2 news that the sukkah on the ground floor broke the man’s fall. He was in stable condition and only mildly injured in his lower body when he was taken to Jerusalem’s Shaare Tzedek Hospital.
“He was building his sukkah and when leaning on the glass the pressure made it shatter and he fell off,” a neighbor told the Ynet news site.
She added that this was not the first time the glass panels on the buildings’ balconies had shattered. “The glass is very weak. Our building is new, only six years old, and the contractor put very unstable glass on the balconies. It’s always shaking.”
An hour before, another man from Jerusalem fell off a ladder while building his sukkah. He was in stable condition.