Wilfried Devilliers (special correspondent in Israel)/Photo credits: AMIR LEVY / GETTY IMAGES EUROPE / GETTY IMAGES VIA AFP
Northern Israel in tension. Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas on October 7, Hezbollah has carried out daily attacks against Israel to support the Palestinian Islamist movement, its ally. The Israeli army responds by bombarding Lebanese territory more and more deeply and by carrying out targeted attacks against Hezbollah officials.
Subjected to daily strikes by Hezbollah, the north of the Hebrew state is constantly preparing. 45 kilometers from the border, Rambam Hospital in Haifa conducts a full-scale evacuation exercise every year. Europe 1 was able to attend.
Emergency scenarios
Six ambulances rush into the emergency room. A young woman in tears comes out of one of them, injured. She looks at her hands, visibly disoriented. It’s 8:30 a.m. and training begins with this scenario: a rocket has just crashed into Haifa and patients are flocking to the emergency room.
Nitzan Attia, reservist major and doctor, is in charge of his training throughout Israel: “The big difficulty is treating everyone. There are many wounded. We have to manage everything in a coordinated way and open new treatment rooms. operation,” she explains.
In real conditions
A stretcher bearer pushes an injured person lying on a bed into one of the crisis rooms. Today, she’s just a model. But the exercise is done well in real-world conditions. A doctor checks his condition: “the patient is in an unstable condition due to an abdominal injury. He is going directly to the operating room for a laparotomy.” The seriously injured go to the operating room, the others to the basement, a huge underground car park transformed in a few hours into a hospital protected from bombing.
“This entire building can be transformed into a fully functional emergency hospital and it can be completely independent from the outside world and autonomous for at least 48 hours,” explains Dr. Braun, director of the internal medicine department. A life-size training essential for the coordination of hospital staff.