(From my friend in Haifa, Forest Rain Marcia - Life on the Border)
Here’s a tiny snippet of Israeli
reality that is not at all normal –
Today I am at home, working on my
computer. As I work, the alerts of sirens elsewhere beep on my phone. Every
beep a siren screaming at other Israelis to run for their lives.
I saw the pattern of the alerts and it
was obvious that they were getting closer to my location. I thought to myself,
“maybe I should get up and go pee before the sirens go off and I have to run
for the shelter.”
I didn’t get up – and the sirens went
off. I grabbed my phone, keys and ran down to the shelter.
The other neighbors who were at home
came down too. The young parents worried about their baby in his daycare
(elsewhere in Haifa). The young woman with her two little dogs. Other
neighbors.
Then a stranger came running in,
panting. She left her care in the middle of the road and wasn’t sure where to
go for shelter. We calmed her down and told her to just focus on catching her
breath. It’s better to worry about her car being in other people’s way than to
go out to early and risk shrapnel.
We waited our 10 minutes, according to
safety guidelines and everyone went back to what they were doing before.
And that was better than yesterday –
I was on the highway, in the center of
Israel when the sirens went off. We were in the left lane and had to get to the
right side of the road where there was a bit of a shoulder. The concept is to
get as far away from the cars as possible and, if there is no shelter, to lie
flat, as low as possible and pray that any shrapnel flies over your head and
doesn’t pierce your body.
Just getting to the side of the road
wasn’t easy. Some people, in panic, kept on driving and could have easily hit
anyone crossing the highway. We managed it, climbed over the rail and
discovered there was a ditch to lie in – better than nothing and certainly
better than being on the same level as the cars. When there is a blast car
windows can shatter and become piercing shrapnel
We found ourselves in the ditch with a
mixture of other people. Those who haven’t seen the results of missile impact
are less careful about following safety guidelines than those of us who have.
It's important to lie down, not just kneel and to get as far away as possible
from anything that can turn into shrapnel.
There was a young woman, perhaps 17
who was on the phone with her dad so he could tell her what to do. She was
worried about leaving the car and didn’t know how to protect herself. We showed
her how to lie down and explained why and then took pictures so she could show
her dad that she implemented what he was trying to explain on the phone. A
young mother was holding a little girl, perhaps 10, trying to pretend that
everything was normal. People were going back to their cars too quickly so I
reinforced what the mother was doing, telling the little girl that her mom was
right, that it’s important to wait the full 10 minutes and that she was very
brave. She told us her name and smiled. The mother who had a harder time
smiling, told us that it was the second time in the same day they were having
that experience.
The booms from the interceptions were
very loud. Very close. They make little puff clouds in the sky that are not at
all cute when you know that they are death interrupted.
At night we heard the news that a
young man was killed by shrapnel when he got out of his car to lie down in a
field, according to instructions. He was alone and the missile was too close,
the shrapnel hit the wrong way and there was no one there to provide emergency
care.
This is our reality and it’s not at
all normal.
No comments:
Post a Comment