Jarred by Israel’s lack of readiness, volunteer rescuers train for quake they know is coming

With repeated state comptroller reports and Knesset committee hearings warning that Israel is woefully unprepared for an inevitable earthquake, a 38-year-old father of three from Rishon Lezion has taken matters into his own hands.

Elad Blumental said he has always had a fear of earthquakes, but after a seminar on the dangers facing Israel two years ago, he realized that “my previous fears were nothing compared to the fears I ought to have.”

Areas in eastern Israel and the West Bank straddle the seismically active Syrian-African Rift, where experts estimate that a major earthquake occurs every 80 to 100 years. The last major tremor struck in 1927, killing 500 people.

The potential for loss of life has risen greatly, however, as the population — and its density — have increased more than elevenfold in the last century.

“I think about all the Israelis who have been killed since October 7,” Blumental said, referring to the bloody Hamas invasion of October 7, 2023, and the nearly three years of war that have followed.

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“After an earthquake, we are talking about 7,000 dead, 28,600 collapsed or seriously damaged buildings, and 9,500 people trapped under rubble,” he said, citing a National Emergency Authority plan based on a scenario akin to the 7.8-magnitude temblor that struck Turkey and Syria in February 2023.

Ten years ago, Blumental set up OneDay, which provides one-time social volunteering activities. The organization is now also providing training for volunteer earthquake rescue teams.

“It will take years and lots of money to strengthen buildings,” Blumental said. In the meantime, bolstering local, civilian rescue services is a fast, cheap, and more immediate contribution.

When a building collapses, rescuers have only a short window to reach those trapped in the rubble — ideally within 24 hours, though rescues can take place up to 72 hours later, Blumental said.

In case of a catastrophic earthquake, Israel’s Fire Service would be occupied with hazardous materials and fires, he warned, and Home Front Command rescue teams would only be able to manage a few dozen buildings at a time.

Given the military’s desperate need for combat soldiers, it would be hard to bring in more reservists, he added, and it could take days to fully mobilize them, assuming roads were passable and the troops weren’t themselves buried under rubble.

After meeting with ministries and the Home Front Command, Blumental discovered that members of local authority rescue teams were often understaffed, unfit, and trained just once a year. Itzik Bar, the new head of the National Emergency Authority, told a Knesset committee last month that the last national Home Front Command earthquake exercise took place in 2017.

The Home Front Command would not comment on manpower, citing security reasons. It said that the National Resilience College and the Home Front Command were working to train local authorities, hospitals, and other institutions to deal with “various emergency situations, including earthquakes of various scales.”

A statement from the Israel Fire and Rescue Services said the organization was “prepared and trained to provide an immediate, large-scale, and rolling operational response in the event of an earthquake or mass-destruction disaster… over long days and nights and at dozens of sites simultaneously.”

During the past year, all fire districts conducted complex rescue exercises at various sites, including the Home Front Command’s training facilities, the statement went on.

However, a spokeswoman confirmed that the roughly 2,400 firefighters spread across 139 fire stations — an average of 17 firefighters per station — constituted just one tenth of the number required by European regulations.

A November report about earthquake preparedness by the Knesset Research and Information Center noted the paucity of public information about local authorities’ preparedness for emergencies, including earthquakes.

The only up-to-date information the center had was supplied to it by the Defense Ministry in 2015. That showed that for wartime emergencies, 73 percent of local authorities (responsible for 46% of the country’s residents) were defined as “struggling” or “likely to struggle,” meaning they were in a situation that was not prepared for an emergency. Only 27% of the local authorities were defined as able to cope.

The report noted that while the Home Front Command was responsible for training local authority teams, it lacked the authority to compel them to drill for future crises.

Blumental decided to partner with local authorities to train 10 volunteer teams as a pilot and obtained support from the Jewish Federations of Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Boston. The teams serve Kiryat Shmona, Safed, Haifa, Nesher, the Jezreel Valley, and Acre in the north, and Tel Aviv, the Hefer Valley, Herzliya, and Rishon Lezion in central Israel.

“We took around 350 physically fit volunteers aged 20 to 40 and trained them in basic and advanced rescue over three days,” Blumental said. “They now meet every two months for training in subjects such as physical and mental health and how to operate others to help.”

“Each volunteer has a bag with a helmet, boots, gloves, kneecaps and first aid,” he said. “Each team has a nine-square-meter [97 square foot] trailer packed with heavy equipment, such as hammers, disc saws, and generators… They know how to break, dig, and make their way through rubble to reach people. They have extra helmets to give to residents who may want to help move the debris.”

Participating local authorities have provided excellent feedback, Blumental went on, while the Home Front Command said in a letter that OneDay’s teams constituted “a vital and complementary pillar of the national emergency system” that “contributes significantly to increasing the resilience of the State of Israel and its preparedness for extreme scenarios.”

When Iranian missiles struck over the last year, teams were able to put their training to use, working alongside Home Front Command rescuers combing through the rubble of struck buildings.

“Our teams worked during both Iran wars, last year and this year,” Blumental said.  “Now, we want to create dozens of additional teams across the country.”

In the absence of state funds, which he is seeking, he wants to raise additional donations.

‘Critical earthquake preparedness years’

In January, Defense Minister Israel Katz declared that this year and next would be “critical earthquake preparedness years.”

Yet, at a Knesset Internal Affairs and Environment Committee discussion about earthquake protection last month, there was much talk of plans hampered by a lack of funds.

Since 1980, new residential buildings in Israel have been required to comply with Standard 413 for earthquake resistance. However, as State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman warned last summer, 80,000 buildings of three or more stories, housing over 810,000 apartments, were built before this date and remain unreinforced.

Many are in central cities such as Tel Aviv, Holon and Bat Yam. And many public buildings, including hospitals, Magen David Adom emergency services points, and 400 schools, cannot be fortified but must be demolished and rebuilt.

Despite efforts to encourage upgrades through the urban renewal plan “Tama 38,” only 3,900 buildings — about 5 percent of those eligible — have been reinforced over two decades, according to the Knesset Research and Information Center report presented to the Knesset committee in November. Another 14% had requested permits.

The National Emergency Authority’s Bar told the committee meeting that the authority had completed an earthquake master plan just before the war with Iran started in late February. He said the plan was based on hypothetical projections of an earthquake that left 7,000 dead, 8,600 badly injured, 9,500 trapped under rubble, 28,600 buildings badly damaged, 290,000 structures with light to moderate damage, and 170,000 people newly homeless.

Bar said the authority wanted to focus on strengthening 10 particularly vulnerable cities, among them Kiryat Shmona on the Lebanese border, where buildings need protection against Hezbollah shelling as well. But the committee heard that while 5,000 buildings in Kiryat Shmona needed protection against both earthquakes and missiles, and planning work on eight new complexes was ongoing, the state had offered only NIS 23 million ($7.9 million) in subsidies for the projects, not enough to incentivize private builders.

‘The biggest threat’

Ariel Heimann, a geologist and senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, has spent 26 years banging on tables to get decision makers to prepare for what he says is “not a question of if, but when” and “the biggest threat to Israel today.”

Heimann, currently compiling a list of equipment that neighbors should buy to provide initial rescue help to one another, said two things were critical: creating a coordinating body within the Prime Minister’s Office with real authority and budgets (noting that the National Emergency Authority is an advisory body that cannot instruct ministries), and actual funding for building reinforcement.

“If all the budgets promised over the past 26 years had been provided, we would be well ahead,” he went on, adding, “But the Finance Ministry isn’t involved.”

“Israel invests many billions [of shekels] against the threat from Iran, which endangers national security,” Heimann told The Times of Israel. “How can it be that not even one billion is found for earthquake preparedness? It’s less than 1% of the defense budget and about 0.13% of the annual state budget.”

“The same billion that the government has pledged in the past but never provided should be used,” he said. “A study conducted in the United States showed that every dollar invested in strengthening infrastructure before an earthquake saves about $13 in rehabilitation costs afterward.”

He added, “We must remember that wars, as hard as they may be, do not postpone earthquakes.”

Blumental said Israel was passing up its chance to prepare for a disaster it knows is coming.

“How much would the Finance Ministry give to go back to October 6, 2023, with the knowledge we have today,” he asked. “Why is the focus on earthquakes different? Do we need to be surprised again? And this is a clear and present danger. Why don’t we learn from our past mistakes for something we know is going to happen?”

Zev Stub contributed to this report.