I was born on May 24, 19XX (let's pretend it was 1999).  It was the same day in 2001 that Keren and Asaf Dror were celebrating their wedding party at the third floor of the Versailles Wedding Hall, Jerusalem. What was supposed to be a blissful, joyous party turned out to be one of the worst civilian disasters in Israel’s history - the collapse of the wedding hall building left 23 people dead and nearly 400 more injured after a wedding party of 700 guests took a horrific turn. It all happened in only a matter of seconds.

                                            Source : Youtube

The Versailles Wedding Hall was built in Jerusalem’s Talpoit neighborhood in 1986 as a two-story structure, with a partial third story (Wilkinson, 2019). Construction designs followed what’s known as the Pal-Kal method - basically is a cost-saving method that comes with certain limitations on the square footage and support structures required, truths that now read as the writing on the wall. 

A beautiful cylindrical structure with fantastic views of the city, the Versailles Hall quickly became a popular wedding and event space. Late in the building’s construction, the design plans were altered to balance the symmetry of the building by expanding the third level across the entire roof. To make up for the new weight of this third level, engineers added structural partitions on the second level, which remained in place until the owners of the wedding hall removed them to make the space more appealing to potential customers. 

It was on the third “rooftop” level that the Dror’s wedding took place (Thing, 2021). In hindsight, the floor of this third level was never intended to be load-bearing, so the design flaws and patchwork fixes contributed to and culminated in the disaster. Understandably, given the timing, in the chaos of the immediate aftermath, a panicking Israeli public worried that the collapse might have been the result of a terrorist bombing. Given the suddenness of the event, where within seconds people who had been happily dancing had simply plummeted out of sight, this seemed like a very real possibility.

While I in no way want to exploit the pain and trauma of those directly impacted by the Versailles Wedding Hall disaster, I was deeply evoked by the suddenness and dramatic swing from the celebratory emotional highs of a wedding to the intense depths of trauma and death. Could it be that they did not even know they were dead, since it all happened in that split second? Or perhaps these people were so absorbed in their gaiety, excitement, and anticipation that even when they are dead, their souls were still trapped inside that joyous, celebrating mood that had yet to reconcile with the truth in the aftermath? 

I bet when Keren and Asaf Dror booked the hall for their wedding, they had no way of anticipating the incredible loss that day would hold. The Dror’s story is what makes this tragedy compelling as a source of narrative inspiration. The couple were dancing in the center of the floor when the building gave way. When she fell with hundreds of others, Keren shattered her pelvis (Wilkinson, 2019). Footage and eyewitness accounts detail her new husband Asaf scrambled through the rubble to reach her and then carry her, and others, to safety as chunks of building materials continued to shift and fall in clouds of concrete dust.

For those who did not survive, most had no time to feel pain. Their minds had no time to even process what was happening before their lives were snuffed out. It’s not a stretch to wonder how many of those spirits did not even know they were dead. My story, Belated, delves into this possibility, the unstable ground jarring spirits loose from their physical bodies. They linger instead, trapped in that moment of joy and elation, of looking forward to the promise of the future. Those wedding guests would continue this dance, unaware of the chaos of disaster continuing without them, caught in an eddy outside of time.

Beloved will be featured in Book Two of The Horror Wedding Series. Trapped by the sudden horror, the bride and groom’s guests would remain eternally stuck in an endless loop of happiness like an unending scream. At least, until a curious medium comes along and threatens this fragile balance, dragging the ghosts violently back into reality. Naturally, they would bring with them all the pent-up regret and horror and rage at their lost time, sixty years of pain raining down like a flood through the surrounding city. If you’ve ever missed a step on the stairs in the dark or received bad news in a moment of pure happiness, this likely seems all too possible.

On a side note, the Versailles Wedding Hall Disaster prompted the Parliament of Israel to pass the "Versailles Law", where an investigative committee was set up to investigate both the Versailles Wedding Hall disaster and the Maccabiah bridge collapse which happened several years before the Versailles disaster (Wikipedia, nd).


References

Freidson, Y. (2016, September 29). Jerusalem wedding hall disaster victims to receive compensation from the state. Ynetnews. https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4860633,00.html

Thing, C. (2021, August 19). Case Study about Versailles Wedding Hall Collapse. Studylib.Net. https://studylib.net/doc/25588197/case-study-about-versailles-wedding-hall-collapse

Wilkinson, T. (2019, March 2). Serene Wedding Fest, Then a Pit of Death. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-may-26-mn-2754-story.html/

Wikipedia. (Nd). Versailles Wedding Hall Disaster. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versailles_wedding_hall_disaster#Collapse