Israel needs to take what the Homefront Command’s Search and Rescue Unit learnt in Brazil and apply it to environmental disasters back home, the Commander of Israel’s national search and rescue unit, Col.(res.) Golan Vach told The Jerusalem Post. “We always have to save lives, but we don’t know everything,” he said. “But we can take what we learnt from the tragedy in Brazil and how we worked together, and apply it here.” Over the past week, Israel has been hit by two severe and deadly winter storms which caused flash flooding across the country. At least six people have died, including a young couple who drowned in an elevator which had short-circuited in Tel Aviv. Several others lost their lives when their cars were swept away by storm waters in northern and southern Israel. National and Municipal rescue teams scrambled all across the country to help people trapped in the floods. While the responsibility of rescuing citizens from scenarios caused by winter storms falls to Israel Police and firefighters, the IDF deployed military vehicles and troops from the Homefront Command as well as from the Armored Corps, Artillery, infantry and navy have been mobilized to help. The Commander of the Galilee Division Brig.-Gen. Shlomi Binder said on Wednesday that the IDF had allocated many soldiers to the relief efforts in the northern city of Nahariya where one man has died during extreme flooding. IDF troops also helped evacuate students from a flooded school in the city. The Israel police and firefighters “have a lot of responsibilities in dealing with flooding and fires, and if we take what we learnt, as the military, in Brazil and combine it with the capabilities of the Israeli police we can be even better,” Vach said. The rescue services, he said, “are extremely professional” but “sometimes there are things that go above their heads and the country needs to know what to do.” According to him, there are several “hotspots” that are known to flood such as the Ga’aton Stream in the Galilee where the body of 32 year old Motti Ben Shabat of Nahariya was found after he was swept away in Nahariya trying to rescue people from a flooded car. “It’s nothing new that it floods every year,” Vach said, adding that the country must invest into proper infrastructure surrounding the stream and have the proper capabilities ready to deal with future events. “You have to be able to think ahead of tragedies, of where there are areas that could be at risk, like underground parking structures which have flooded in the past or communities that are at more at risk. There is a lot more the country has to do to be 100%,” he said. According to Vach, there needs to be a better integration of all agencies like Israel Police, Firefighters, IDF and others during episodes of increment weather. “There is a need for all the agencies to sit together and prepare themselves to make sure that there are no deaths during bad weather. And we can do that,” he said. But, he stressed, “if at the end of the day, if you want someone specific to happen, you need to make sure it happens in the field. You can’t just write that you learnt, the paper won’t be there in the next fire or next flood. But the unit that you built after a tragedy will be there,” Vach said referring to the aerial firefighting squadron of 14 planes that was created after the Carmel fire disaster in 2010. And with the stormy weather expected to continue into next week, Vach hopes that future tragedy will be prevented. “We must learn because we have to make sure that no one else loses their lives,” he said. “When I’m sent abroad, I bring the best of the best in the country and that’s why we are so successful.” “When you go on a date you put on makeup and look as best as you can, but when you go home you wear your pajamas and don’t really care how you look. It’s the same in this scenario. But I want to look as good as I am abroad back home,” Vach said. “I want Israel to be the best all the time, not just abroad.”
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