Early this morning, I was out in the street. I went to the clinic for a blood test, had breakfast at a sidewalk cafe, strolled through the shuk. I put my head in the doorway of a favorite small store, bought a bottle of mineral water from the falafel stand. A normal day, getting hotter as the morning wore on. Everything as usual. But in stores with radios turned on I heard broadcasts in Hebrew and Russian instructing folks to go into shelters at 11:00 for the national emergency drill.
I looked around at sidewalks crowded with busy people, at the abundance of fresh food everywhere. Myriad shops open for business. Traffic flowing on our well-maintained streets. It seemed incredible that missiles would ever land here to crush living people and burn buildings; to destroy this normal existence. And because I’m curious, and because I wanted to blog about this, I started asking people what they intended to do when the siren sounded.
It’s a very loud, urgent, scary wail. When it resounds across the country to remind us of our dead, it does sound like crying. I suppose it’s because we ourselves are weeping then. But in a real emergency, when adrenalin is pouring through the blood and our hearts are jumping, it sounds like a wavering howl. I wonder how many ignored it today and just got on with whatever they were doing, and how many complied with the Home Front’s orders.
At the clinic, I saw signs with arrows pointing to the safe areas. Banks, supermarkets – big, organized places – and certainly schools, complied. However many individuals that I talked to today took a cynical view of the drill. My friend in the second-hand store told me that it’s just the government’s way of covering its back: “They don’t help in emergencies. They’re just doing this so they can say ‘We gave instructions and did our bit.’ ” (I don’t agree; the government does protect the population as far as possible in war.) “Anyway,” he added, “I’m not going to close shop and go to the shelter just for a drill. Who wants to look like a fool on the street?”
The owner of the falafel store, an older man, said that the nearby shelter is filthy and crammed with junk. That’s probably true: I’ve been hearing several people complain of that. My own building’s shelter has piles of old lumber in it put there by a resident who stubbornly refuses to clear it out.
“In any case, the real thing is very different from a drill,” said the falafel man.”Believe me, I know.”
In spite of the bright sun shining on us, a little chill went through me.
One blogger commented that “Anglos” are used to emergency drills in school and have no problem complying with orders. That’s probably so. But I found it discouraging that so many Israelis, so many of whom have lived through the country’s wars, shrug their shoulders and shut their minds off to the very real threat coming from Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza today.
Myself, over time I’ve come to believe that anything is possible and that she who prepares is more likely to survive. Nothing you can do about force majeur, of course (French for when G-d’s hand lies heavy on you).
I was tempted to go to the supermarket to observe how people would take the drill. On second thought, I went home to go through it there, so that if there should ever be a real missile strike, emergency procedure would be imprinted on my memory.
When the siren went off, I was typing away here. My husband is home with a cold, so together we turned off the air conditioning, took the key to the shelter from its hook in the kitchen, grabbed our bag containing flashlight, water, and radio, and headed downstairs. Since we’re on the first floor, we made it in 1 1/2 minutes. We were the only two people in the shelter. I figure that we may have been the only two people in the building, because everyone else would be at work or school.
I turned the radio on. They were broadcasting the hourly news. Not a word about the drill; no instructions. We stood in the dirty, unpleasant shelter for 10 minutes, fiddling with the radio to get a station broadcasting something related to what was supposed to be happening around the country. We got only one station giving updates. At the end of 10 minutes, we were told to leave the shelters and go about our day as usual. A little frustrating – I expected, maybe naively, that the radio and TV would uniformly interrupt normal transmissions to talk about emergency preparation, or count off the time remaining, or something. I did feel a little foolish.
But I’ve learned a few important things.
One: it takes very little time to get into the shelter if the emergency kit is by the door.
Two: I’m going to call 106 and complain to the municipality about the state of our shelter. Missiles strikes happen in the middle of the night too, not just in daylight when you’re conveniently dressed and ready for action. Imagine 20 or so scared, shaken people forced out of bed to stand together for an unpredictable length of time in a dank, dirty, closed space.
Three: lots of people are in denial over the things that threaten us.
Ignore those who would talk you out of it, take responsibility, and be prepared.
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Update: November 15, 2009
We have since moved out of that apartment. Before we left, Home Front inspectors came to the building, surveyed the shelter, and said they’d slap a fine on all the tenants. The neighbor cleaned up. But he won’t talk to me anymore. Oh, well.
The new apartment has a mamad – a strong room of reinforced concrete. I use it as my office.
[...] You can see pictures of Mimi’s shelter here. [...]
Thanks for sharing. I also wondered who would take the drill seriously… and did participate.
I was in a bus at 11 am and looking at my watch wondering why I did not hear anything.Nobody on the bus heard the siren:the sound of the air condition system was so strong that it muffled the sound outside. I know I can get to the shelter in our building in just a few seconds, but the door was a) the door was locked b)it is filthy!
Yaelian, you can report the weak siren by phoning 106.
I was home with the windows closed and the A/C on and couldn’t hear the siren either.
[...] friends in Israel are posting about the drill today: Mother in Israel, Baila, Dina, Mimi and Mrs. S. Cosmic X remembers ducking under his desk in [...]
When the siren went off, I gathered my two month old and 17 year old and we went into our Mamad where my 2 year old was napping.
My 17 year old asked me why I was taking this exercise seriously and I simply replied with “Care to ask that question to someone from Sderot?”
I gotta say, the general apathy so many people had regarding the exercise disgusted me.
Devo, it just made me sad. I understand that folks would rather turn their minds away from scary scenarios, but the threat is there, and ignoring it is childish.
I think that both of you are misunderstanding the attitudes of most Israelis towards these drills. It’s not that they are disrespectful/childish, it’s just that they’ve been through a lot already and are used to going into shelters. Do you think that anybody likes to think about being attacked and running into a shelter? No. People know what they’re supposed to do in case of an emergency and at the same time they know that things don’t always go as planned.
You must include me and my extended family among the Israelis. Having been tax-paying citizens for over half of the state’s modern history, served in three wars, and experienced taking small children to a shelter in the middle of the night many times, we qualify. Please consider these things:
1. No matter how often you’ve run to a shelter, you never get used to the fear and the stress. Have you experienced running to a shelter during a missile attack? If so, you’ll remember the feeling of rising panic that you have to swallow and control. You have to react in the safest, most logical way in order to save yourself and help those around you. Are there little ones, elderly folk, invalids or people with limited ability to cope? They all have to had drilled. Correct reactions acquired during practice drills save lives.
Even superficial calm is better than panic in an emergency. That’s the message of this thread, and the message that to my sorrow, I saw ignored too often here.
2. Home folks living in the north and the south of the country have unfortunately had plenty of “practice” but here in the central region, which has felt Scuds but not an ongoing barrage of Katyushas and Quassams, many people are in denial. “It won’t happen here.”
3. The nature of the threat hanging over us is different than anything we’ve experienced before: simultaneous terrorist attacks and missile strikes. Mr. Vilna’i, the Minister of Security, has said that the entire country is vulnerable – every office, apartment building, hospital, kindergarten, shop.
People aren’t born knowing what to do when bombs fall nearby. Apart from seasoned Israelis, there are many new immigrants who need to understand the threat and drill for it. If, for example, my Russian neighbor’s kid refuses to do the uncool drill because he’s absorbed an indifferent attitude from his friends, he’s more likely to panic if G-d forbid, an emergency should arise. So are is his cool friends.
It’s important to raise consciousness and change this complacent (or denying) attitude.
Now this is not to say that every one on the street has it. Most people know in their gut that what Vilna’i said is true. There is also a certain fatalism. I myself feel it, living so many years in a country that exists by extraordinary vigilance (and daily miracles).
Of course, nobody wants to dwell on, or even contemplate, such horrible scenarios, but the information is out there, provided by the government and the Home Front.
I suppose that I, and perhaps other commenters, have come across as superior-sounding, but that isn’t the truth. “Childish” was perhaps an unkind thing to say. But to persist in denial when a real threat hovers over you is not the adult way of coping.