"But it's a thin red line of heroes when the drums begin to roll." Rudyard Kipling
The drums no longer roll in Israel - it's the phones which ring when the ambulance service gets the call.
and those calls for an ambulance come in all sizes in Israel, just as they do in every american city and town. There are the auto accidents that plague all of us, the off shoots of petty crime and domestic violence of all types.
But hovering over the shoulder of every emergency dispatcher in every call center is the specter of another homicide attack - one more suicide bomber waiting in the wings, riding a bus, walking the streets or getting a ride from an accomplice as they go about their grisly task of taking as many Jewish lives as possible - all while thousands of innocents go about their daily activities in modern Israel.
and the first calls after every incident always go to Magen David adom, the Israeli ambulance Service, by dialing 101 on any phone in Israel. These cries for help will be electronically routed to one of the 15 nearest regional service centers.
Magen David adom, or simply the MDa, covers Israel with some 1400 paid cadres and about 8,000 volunteers, many of whom begin their journey in emergency medicine as early as their fifteenth birthday. Though they'd be called kids over here, the intensity of daily life in Israel matures them much faster on their road to becoming a paramedic, with a mandated detour to the defense forces along the way.
The MDa ambulances include GPS systems, for dispatching and so the medics can find those calling more easily - saving precious time and lives. and every medic on every rig knows that the time ticking away between major incidents is bringing them closer to the next act of terror - which will explode in due time - not if but when - killing their neighbors, friends and relatives.
In many cases the volunteers and the paid staffs in the MDa are a family affair, with mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, all serving in the ranks, often in the same region together.
When the latest bomb, courtesy of a youthful member of Islamic Jihad, detonated in the Falafel Rosh Ha'Ir restaurant Monday, killing 9 and injuring 68, just two hours before the new Parliament was to be sworn in, on the fifth day of Passover, the telephone calls for medical help were routed to the Dan Region Headquarters in Tel aviv.
Dispatchers checked their status screens, noted the closest units with their on board GPS systems and routed them to the scene. as more calls flooded in and as these ambulances arrived, additional units were advised to move in that direction. Other ambulances in the Region were told to relocate from their stations to those in the downtown area, while those in outlying areas were moved up to occupy the empty stations closer to the city limits.
Protocols, assembled over the years from the debriefing of many critical incidents, were followed and updates were broadcast to all the units in the region, including those in Mazeh, Yigal alon, Jaffa, Ramat Gan and Bnei Brak. In addition, the radios were tuned to tactical frequencies allowing the dispatchers and the responding units to monitor the operations of the Home Front Command, the army headquarters responsible for all the units inside Israel, and the Tel aviv police. Direct lines were punched in and picked up, alerting three major medical centers in Tel aviv - Ichilov, Tel Ha'Shomer and Bellinson - of incoming patients, while the ambulance crews were directed to switch channels to the hospital frequencies once the patients were stabilized and aboard.
While the wail of sirens scattered the crush of people at the scene, the dispatch centers remained calm and collected. Despite the air of sadness which always permeates the air conditioned atmosphere during a mass casualty situation, the operators remained calm, manned the phones, kept the screens up, took the calls, dispatched the rigs, maintained the radio links, passed the information between centers, kept the army and the police in the loop and insured that the status boards were up to date. They are the keys to the delivery of emergency medical service throughout Israel.
The MDa call takers listen to the daily drumbeat of attrition warfare, with undeclared truces of indeterminable lengths, which end with the sound of an explosion and a flurry of calls to 101 - all out of sight and out of mind until the electronic routers cause the boards to light up and bring nighttime to the middle of the day.
and just like dispatchers everywhere, they dot their workstations with their little bits of home, of play and toys. They have their small flags, remembrances of brothers lost, mementos from families at home, photos of kids and recollections of days long past and reminders of why they, too, must fight every day to survive. and with just two and a half minutes of warning in every fight, every one understands why they must win each battle.
The MDa is on the front lines every day in Israel, responding to their crises with a steady valor, never knowing when that second bomb, the one designed specifically to kill the first responders, will go off. That secondary piece of ordnance is always in the back of every paramedic's mind - every hour of every day.
It has been a rocky road to international acceptance, despite the technology and the skill of the crews. The MDa was finally admitted to the International Federation of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent Societies in December of 2005, after a 56 year journey of hope and many disappointments, where their Red Crystal flag can finally join the others in a belated brotherhood dedicated to the sick and injured.
a large part of the operating budget of Magen David adom is provided by personal donations from all over the world - budgets are tight for emergency services everywhere - which support their life saving efforts.
May that second bomb never go off.
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