Isaac Ashkenazi, a professor of disaster medicine at Ben-Gurion University, said terror attacks “create a sense of vulnerability. They always try to take our resilience down.”
Photos by Robert Wiener
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July 23, 2009
Meeting with their New Jersey counterparts in Newark on July 15, Israeli doctors, emergency responders, and post-disaster planners shared their grim experiences with terror and its aftermath.
Often graphic and consistently wrenching, their presentations centered on the targeting of children, cleaning up after a terrorist attack, coping with mass casualties, and restoring a sense of normalcy in the face of sudden violence.
The all-day program, at the New Jersey Dental School on the Newark campus of the University of Medicine and Dentistry, was sponsored jointly by the school, the New Jersey Israel Commission, and the Consulate General of Israel in New York (see sidebar).
New York and New Jersey constitute “a diverse and densely populated area more dependent on mass transit than anywhere else in the country, a risk area higher than any other in the country,” said Richard Canas, director of New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, in his opening remarks.
“In a sense I’m preaching to the choir. But there are a thousand NJ practitioners in this field that do not have a clue.”
Leading off for the Israeli presenters was Dr. Isaac Ashkenazi, a professor of disaster medicine at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be’er Sheva and a consultant to Harvard University and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ashkenazi warned that terrorists wage a “symbolic violence” bent on destroying sacred institutions and even children.
“They like our children,” he said. “They may even love our children. But specific victims have no significance for them. They create a sense of vulnerability. They always try to take our resilience down.”
Ashkenazi suggested a timetable for helping a community bounce back quickly from a traumatic event.
“In 20 minutes you clear the site of victims. In 60 minutes, all victims are treated in hospital. In three hours the area is completely clean of flesh and blood, but more important, in four days the area should be completely reconstructed.”
The goal, said Ashkenazi, is to send a message to the perpetrators.
“We should show them ‘business as usual,’ even if we are traumatized,” he said.
The word “resilience” echoed and re-echoed throughout eight hours of presentations.
“Israel is a country that could not exist without resiliency,” said Benjamin Krasna, its deputy consul general in New York. “We have twice in the last three years had to put over one million people within 15 seconds in a bomb shelter. To be able to do that you need a very resilient population.”
But as rescue teams and even societies have become more sophisticated in restoring damaged lives and buildings, so too have the perpetrators of terror, Ashkenazi warned.
“First responders are always in danger” because bombers may place additional explosives at a scene and detonate them after the initial blast, he said.
Michael Balboni, a security consultant who served as New York state’s deputy secretary of public safety, spoke of specific local vulnerabilities.
“What we are now seeing has always been our worst nightmare,” he said. “It’s not just taking out a water system; it’s taking out a water system and starting fires. It’s not just detonating a bomb in the subway; it’s taking out the electricity so the response is all over the place.”
Rafi Ron, a consultant on transportation security and a former security director at Ben-Gurion Airport, gave a talk punctuated with graphic and sometimes gory photographs and videos of attacks in Israel.
Tzipi Kahana, a pathologist at the National Center of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv, cautioned first responders to “evacuate the wounded, but please make sure you don’t take parts of the scene that might be very important for law enforcement.”
He urged listeners to “prepare yourselves by having you and your personnel trained in identifying anything suspicious…. We rely on every pair of eyes out there. If we can do that we can prevent a secondary attack.”
“In Israel, as part of the culture, a youngster who sees a school bag unattended will go to a teacher,” added Balboni. “We should be able to incorporate that as part of the normal living condition here as a matter of common-sense precautions.”
In another address studded with graphic visuals of terror attacks, Alon Basker spoke of coping with mass casualties.
Basker is deputy training director of Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency medical service and its equivalent of the Red Cross.
“The suicide bomber is determined to act, cannot be stopped, and has the ability to choose the time and place,” he said. “The most important word is preparedness. We have to have training and training and training, again and again and again.”
Other speakers included Tzipi Kahana, a pathologist at the National Center of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv, who spoke of the necessity of preserving disaster areas as crime scenes, and Estelle Rubinstein, a South African-born social worker at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.
Prepared for the unthinkable
Andrea Yonah has been in the center of planning last week’s disaster preparedness conference for much of the past year.
Yonah is the executive director of the New Jersey Israel Commission, a cosponsor of the symposium.
“This is information we bring from Israel that will help the target populations of experts in terror medicine. I wanted to bring people together into a room and say, ‘What are the areas you can learn from each other on?’” she told NJ Jewish News during a lunch break at the July 15 symposium in Newark.
The audience included members of New Jersey’s Jewish community who deal with medical disasters and other emergencies.
“I can better understand the situations I can be called into and the need for preparedness,” said Rabbi Lawrence Zierler of the Jewish Center of Teaneck.
He is part of an interfaith effort called “disaster chaplaincy” and a volunteer chaplain for his hometown fire department. “Everyone needs to be a Boy Scout,” he said. “In Israel, everyone is aware. They are not disenfranchised.”
Teaneck dentist Richard Strauss said, “We all have to know how to react to the possibility of terrorism. There is a tremendous amount the Israelis can give us because they have seen it firsthand.”
Seated beside him, his wife and office manager, Rose, said, “There is a constant threat of terror and the ability to react appropriately is imperative.”
Dr. Aryeh Simmonds of Teaneck, a neonatologist, said, “I think it is good to be prepared. If there is a tragedy, we all chip in. I think we can learn from the way Israelis have incorporated this training into daily life.”
— ROBERT WIENER
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