By Dana Ben Kaplan
SANTEE, California — In November 2019, I participated in my second Training Deployment of the year to Israel as an American Firefighter with the EVP (Emergency Volunteers Project). The EVP, formed in 2009, is a registered 501(c)(3) organization, and authorized by the Israeli government.
“EVP has been put on standby for possible military action in Israel” – This was the email I received early in 2019. Since it also mentioned having to soon provide sensitive personal information–and being that I’m a firefighter, not a soldier — I contacted the EVP to see if this was some kind of scam.I had been looking forward to joining the EVP, whose main mission is to “help support Israel in time of crisis.”
Retired for a few years from the Santee Fire Department, I missed being being a part of the “Fire and Water” deployment in 2016 to the “Haifa Fires”, which were actually all over Israel forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israelis. The fires caused Israel to ask for firefighting help from other countries.
Later, terrorists in Gaza used kites, and then balloons, to send incendiary devices into Israel during the hot, dry summer. As in San Diego, the prevailing winds in Israel blow inland, off the water. Southern Israel, next to Gaza, is largely comprised of small villages and agricultural communities.
That email was no scam; the EVP operates under the Israel Fire and Rescue Authority, which cooperates with the IDF. That early 2019 deployment ended up being cancelled, but I was soon thereafter invited to attend a fundraiser in April 2019 at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles to help raise money to send an EVP Team to Israel for a Training Deployment. I was then selected for that trip to Israel, which took place in June 2019. Later, I felt honored to be asked to be Team Leader for another Training Deployment in November 2019. That role simply consisted of making sure that Team members came to me with all questions. Then, once on the ground in the Fire Stations in Israel, I was to stay in touch with both the American and Israeli EVP administrators, and ensure that everyone was accounted for each day.
The emergency calls we responded to were quite different this time in November as opposed to my deployment in the summer, when we fought brush- and-grass fires, much like we have in San Diego (the terrain and weather in central and southern Israel are very similar to San Diego County). During this second deployment in November, we responded to elevator rescues, vehicle accidents, multi-family residential fire alarms, and structure fire rescues; I never touched a nozzle except during morning equipment checks.
A couple of days after we started working, rocket fire from Gaza began pouring into Israel. The Station Commander conducted a walkthrough of the in-house bomb shelter. These are not only present in every Fire Station, but in all new residential occupancies. Around 450 rockets were fired toward Israel in the course of about 36 hours. I finally had to silence my “Red Alert – Israel” app if I wanted to try to get some sleep. Two other EVP members (both from Texas) were deployed not far from where I was, and they took a photo of an Iron Dome interception over their Station. Yet the Israeli Firefighters seemed quite calm. They would even change the TV channel to watch soccer, whereas we American Firefighters were staring at the TV watching surveillance camera video of the interceptions, and any rockets which may have passed their missile defenses. Watching the public’s reaction during the missile warning sirens, I couldn’t help but wonder what people in San Diego would say and do if we had continuous barrages of rockets coming across our border.
Here is a Fire Service Incident Debrief (edited by EVP):
Thursday 14 November 2019 0615 hrs
Jerusalem Fire Engine
Asaf, Oren & I are first on scene with Commander E. & his Deputy, M. Asaf & I jump out of the Engine and go to the building entrance, passing a police officer holding back a crying lady. We kneel on the ground as about a hundred people watch us “mask up” (to breathe from our compressed air bottles). It’s been a while since I had to do this under duress, but surprisingly it all came back very naturally. It helped that most of the Israeli equipment is exactly the same as what I’ve been using in Santee for years. Our Station Commander is standing at the door with us, and I don’t need translation to know he’s urging us to hurry.
Asaf has the TIC (thermal imaging camera), and I’m right behind him and as we enter the hallway, and just at the point where I anticipate he’ll break left to go upstairs, he goes right, downstairs. Since my firefighting experience is in typical Southern California buildings, without basements, I make a quick mental note to remember that there are many below-grade occupancies here. I’m also glad that I had let Asaf lead, and in a few seconds that will prove critical.
There seems to be water everywhere. I hear it and see it flowing down from above, even though there’re no fire lines deployed yet. It must be from fire sprinklers. I join Asaf crawling on our knees in a cramped room with small beds. It’s barely light enough with the hand lantern (the same model we used in Santee) to see through the smoke. I’m sweeping through toys under one bed while he’s sweeping through debris on top of the next two beds on my left. Suddenly he’s looking at me and yelling something and I get up and we start moving towards our exit. I believe he has found a child victim.
I take a few steps towards our exit to lead the way before realizing that I’m probably just going to slow him down. I flatten up against a wall to let him squeeze past, and then follow him up. We come out into the low light of an overcast early morning, and I now see the baby in his arms. He runs to the nearby waiting MDA medics for the handoff. It looks dead, limp and smoke-stained. I don’t know why, but I’m not breathing hard at all. I do know that I still have good air in my bottle.
I climb over the guardrail (which I don’t remember doing upon our chaotic arrival) and open the door to our Fire Engine and quickly grab a piece of personal equipment before heading back in. By now crowd size has doubled and the other crews have arrived. We’re all split into small teams conducting our Secondary Search through the maze of this old building (it looks like the basement’s been converted into a living space. I find out at later that it was originally designed to be a bomb shelter, but was converted into apartments. This is apparently not uncommon, although illegal).
Just as at our fire yesterday, we find residents who are hiding in their rooms who don’t want to leave. With all the smoke, flowing water, and noise around them, I again find this strange, because this is not like anything I’ve experienced in San Diego County. I’m by myself now in front of a man who’s standing in his doorway, asking me something in Hebrew. I can figure out what he’s basically saying, asking if he can stay. I ask him, “atah medaber Anglit?” (do you speak English?). As he shakes his head, “no”, I have his answer anyway: “lo; bva’ka’sha, atah bo, liv ro’ach”, which along with my clear hand signals is apparently understandable enough to get him moving. It’s something like, “No; please, you go. Evacuate.”
I then join the bulk of the interior fire crews who are trying to force open a door. But even with hydraulic tools, and after too many minutes of work, we’ve only managed to peel the metal skin back, before someone arrives with the door key (I find out later from Jake, another EVP Team member, from Texas, that a resident simply tossed it down from a third floor window). These are the funny things which happen all the time in the Fire Service. Of course, there’s nobody inside. But we had to check. It’s always seemed ironic to me that in Israel, a country with far fewer burglaries than we have in the US, the doors are much stronger. Good for residents’ security, but bad for criminals and firefighters.
I head outside and take off my BA (breathing apparatus), get a full bottle from our Engine to switch out, and then connect with two other EVP Team members whose Engines had arrived on scene after us; Paul (Hawai’i,) my Station partner, but on a different Engine; and Spencer (Boston Fire), who is assigned to a different Station with Jake, all 3 having arrived on scene after my Engine. The Commander and I look at each other for a moment and he gives me a ‘thumbs up’. I think he was probably just glad to see that I hadn’t gotten lost or gone down.
A little while later on scene, outside, I said to Oren, a fellow Firefighter I knew, “that baby’s dead, isn’t it”. He said, “No, it’s fine. It was breathing and talking in the ambulance.” That really surprised me and made me happy. Up until then I was feeling bad that we couldn’t have saved that baby. Looking at a photo taken just before I found out it had survived, you can see the disappointment on my face.
Saturday 16 November 2019 0715 hrs
Commander E., with Deputy Commander M., led a full Incident Debrief of our “Multi-Family Residential Structure Fire w/Rescue.” As we stand in a circle, Firefighters take turns telling their stories of what they did, just like we have always done on our Incident Debriefs in Santee. At my turn, I ask if I can read my debrief, which I had nearly completed. I’d typed it into my phone late in the night after that morning’s incident. I read it [above], and after I finish, I mention that I was going to add two points to it.
1. I was very impressed with Commander E.’s presence on the incident, and with the way he conducted an on-scene Primary Incident Debrief, there on the sidewalk.
2. I found it kind of amazing watching my fellow Firefighter Asaf on scene. After handing the baby off to the Paramedics, he just turned around and went right back in to continue Search and Rescue, acting almost like he’d just brought out someone’s cellphone and handed it to them (as far as I saw, I was the only Firefighter on scene who had made it a point of going up to him to shake his hand afterwards). He barely glanced at me, acting like saving a child in a fire was a common occurrence for him.
At that point I’d finished talking. Commander E. said to me, “Every one of these guys, they’ve done a hundred rescues just like this.” Then he said, “You did a good job.” Asaf then turned toward me and spoke in Hebrew, while Deputy Commander M. translated for me: “I feel like we both rescued that child. I wouldn’t have been able to find it without you, and you were just as much the rescuer as I was.” I thanked him. But in reality, I did nothing. I just followed him in and provided a 2nd person on the search.
The Fire Service rule here in the US is the same as in Israel: nobody goes in alone (in actuality, hose lines go in immediately, to support S&R, unless there is an immediate need for rescue – which there was here). After he finished speaking, I thanked Asaf for what he said, and we shook hands. All of the Firefighters clapped. It was a very good Incident Debrief, one which I’ll never forget.
A little while later, in the apparatus room, away from everyone, Asaf told me (by typing it into Google Translate on his cell phone) that he was not happy about losing track of me during Secondary Search, and that he’d been worried – I should have stuck with him. But I saw work being done so I just joined in. We had been in no danger at that point. I just wanted to be sure that I was treated like a regular crewmember, not merely a visiting observer. I’m confident that I’m very safety- conscious; experienced enough to see the big picture and not get in over my head. Plus, the training which I’ve had with Santee Fire is excellent. I remember when I was a young Firefighter, I questioned a lot of the seemingly overly-strict and rigid structure of our Department, which as a young Department is not quite the same today. But like most things in life, in retrospect, I can really appreciate it now, after all these years. The strong work ethic and discipline that the Chief and other Officers instilled in us have never left me, on the fire ground, in the station, or elsewhere.
The next morning when Asaf drove out of the Station we gave a small wave to each other. But there had been no indication from anyone on the shift that he’d done anything out of the ordinary. Maybe it’s because I don’t understand Hebrew well enough, but I didn’t hear anyone talking about the incident, or see anyone mentioning anything to Asaf about his save. I don’t think this would have been the case back home. If there was a “good” structure fire, even without rescue, everyone heard about it. There would be talk around the dayroom table that shift as well as the next morning at shift change.
I remained on duty for another 24-hour shift on Shabbat, but I was granted time off in the evening as Shabbat ended, and I took a train to visit my cousin in Tel Aviv. I arrived at a South Tel Aviv train station in all-African neighborhood, but couldn’t get cell service. I walked around for a while looking for a coffee shop to get Wi-Fi and never saw anyone who wasn’t from Africa (these were not Ethiopians, nor Jewish). I went back to the train station and asked a Filipino-Israeli Security Guard, who spoke perfect English, if he knew where I could get Wi-Fi – he asked me for the number I was calling, dialed it on his phone, and handed it to me. In Jerusalem on the return, same thing: I asked a Security Guard where I could get Wi-Fi, and he dialed the number to the Fire Station and handed me his phone (I don’t think that would happen in the US…).
When Commander E. came to pick me up back in Jerusalem at the train station afterwards, he said they’d been worried about me; “you’re like our brother.” Then as we approached the Fire Station, he mentioned that everyone was out, at a big fire in Mehane Yehuda market, and that Asaf and Oren had made a rescue(!) I couldn’t believe that I’d missed another fire (and one with a rescue), or that Asaf had two grabs in two consecutive shifts. Commander E. said that they’d found a man on the first floor lying on his back with his shirt pulled up over his face. Apparently he’d tried to go back upstairs to get something, maybe his phone. I spoke with Oren and Asaf later; they told me they both carried him out, and that the man was fine. I said, “Two rescues and two saves by two Firefighters on the same crew on two consecutive shifts? I’ve never experienced that in San Diego”; but he said that was unusual in Israel as well.
There are hundreds of American Firefighters on the EVP Fire Teams. Most of them are Christians who believe in helping support the Jewish State and its people. But there are many roles that are open to civilian volunteers and medically certified volunteers. See the website EVP.org.il for plenty of information, photos / videos, and more. If interested, please feel free to contact me with any questions, through the Contact page of the Krav Maga San Diego, Inc. website (KravMagaSD.com).
I hope to meet some of you on a Training Deployment in Israel one day.
*
Dana Ben Kaplan, who teaches Krav Maga in San Diego, is a retired Santee firefighter.
Don,
Thank you for helping spread the word about the Emergency Volunteers Project.