23. Versailles Wedding Hall Disaster, Jerusalem
Built: 1986
Collapsed: 2001
Est. Damages: $37.2 Million*
On May 24, 2001, hundreds of guests were celebrating a wedding at Jerusalem’s Versailles Wedding Hall in the usual fashion, by dancing the night away, when several of the guests noticed the floor below their feet beginning to sag. Seconds later, the floor collapsed and hundreds of partygoers fell more than 90-feet to the landing 2 stories below.
Versailles Wedding Hall Disaster, Jerusalem @CatastrophicFailure / Reddit.com
Out of more than 400 people in attendance, 23 were killed in the accident and 380, including the bride, were injured. At the time of its occurrence, the tragedy at the Versailles Wedding Hall was the deadliest civil disaster in Israel’s brief history but, has since, been surpassed by the forest fire that afflicted Mount Carmel in 2010, and, more recently, the Mount Meron disaster of 2021.