Underground and surrounded by technology, Israeli paramedics watch and wait for Iranian strikes
TEL AVIV – Israel’s largest emergency response center would resemble any shipping center in any American city – a hive of uniformed first responders surrounded by ceiling-high monitors and computer-sized monitors.
But Magen David Adom’s deployment unit in Ramla, about 12 miles southeast of Tel Aviv, is more than 100 meters underground, protected by thick walls and a complex ventilation system capable of providing fresh air in the event of regular and irregular attacks.
“You can’t imagine any other emergency services, paramedics, paramedics, in the world working in a shelter. But for us, this is a need, a basic need,” said Uri Shacham, deputy director of MDA and chief of staff. The role of the MDA, he said, “it was to make sure that no matter what happens outside, no matter how challenging the situation, this brain continues to work.”
When NBC News visited the facility Tuesday, the atmosphere appeared busy but relaxed as about a dozen uniformed dispatchers manned phones and plotted emergency routes on multiple screens.
Soon, calls rang with news of incoming projectiles from Iran. The warning appeared to reach unmanned phones as quickly as it reached the ears of dispatchers.
Within minutes, the dispatcher’s screen showed green ovals indicating the possible direction of the missiles.
Initially, two or three covered most of the greater Tel Aviv area, Israel’s largest region covering approximately 586 square kilometers and home to more than 3.9 million residents.
As the arrows approach, the ovals turn orange then red and are split into more than a dozen smaller ovals as the software narrows down their possible paths.
A separate screen showed a map of the city and the location of what the system identified as possible fallen debris or missile impacts.
The map showed ambulances already on their way to the site, although the dispatcher never picked up the call because the information went automatically from the military through the dispatcher and on to the nearest ambulances and motorcycles.
“Before, if I got a call about a house on fire due to an arrow falling, they had to call me and say, listen, there is a fire, send your ambulance,” said Shakem. “Now we are working on the same computer system. And when they put it in their system – the fire in Tel Aviv in this area because of the alleged missile launch – it will be automatically sent to Magen David Adom, it saves time, it saves all the information that is lost during the translation.”
A more complex system seems to stretch the limits of how much human error can be reduced.
However, on the sharp edge of all that human impossibility, there are still paramedics like Itai Orion, who considers himself lucky not to have been called to the scene of the missiles.
But his wife’s family lives in Beit Shemesh, where Sunday’s attack killed nine people huddled in a bomb shelter – the highest death toll in any strike since the start of Iran’s offensive.
When the missiles hit, Orion said, he felt as insecure about his family’s safety as if he were a normal person.
“You have to go through that, you know, that time when you’re not sure if everybody’s OK and you have to check and you don’t get it because there’s no cell reception in a secure area,” he said. “That’s just, you know, run of the mill, academically, the Israeli experience right there.”
