My Introduction to Emergency Management (Heidi)

As I mentioned in my last post, this past week I had the opportunity to watch as the newly founded NEMA (Israeli equivalent of FEMA) conducted it's largest national drill ever. Quite possibly the most intimidating and amazing experience I've had! Here are some of the more interesting events:

First, it was me and these guys. Yeah.

They had a school prepare for a missile attack - so they sounded the siren and had the kids go into missile/bomb shelters.

After that they pretended as if a missile had struck the building and children were trapped inside - so they sent rescue crews in (and up) to get them and had EMS triage. These kids were awesome.

Another day they showed us a resilience facility - so they showed us how they help displaced individuals and what they do for stress relief.

Then they took us to a collapsed building - they had demolished it before we got there and put dummy dolls in there to show us their search and rescue response.

The last day they pretended there was a car bomb and so they evacuated 6000 people from 9 buildings in downtown Tel Aviv - and we watched.

At the very beginning of the drill I met two FEMA guys who really took me under their wing. After the drill we took a trip to Caesaria to see the Roman ruins. I'm now in Beersheva. I'll be writing up findings from the drill and collaborating on research to work that our Center is working on. Should be fun!