Rockets rained down on Israel for the seventh straight day Sunday, causing minor injuries, a relief compared to the fatality the attacks caused the previous day. The larger tragedy Sunday was an incident at a synagogue in Givat Ze’ev, just north of Jerusalem, where a bleacher collapse during a Shavuot service killed two people and injured more than 160, five of them critically.
Magen David Adom paramedics and EMTs responded in minutes to the scene, eerily reminiscent of the Mount Meron stampede during Lag B’Omer that killed 45 Orthodox worshippers, when MDA medics responded to that multi-casualty incident.
The deceased Sunday were identified as a 12-year-old boy and a 40-year-old man.
“When I reached the scene, there was a large commotion. People were shouting and running in all directions while saying that a grandstand had collapsed with dozens injured inside a synagogue,” said Moshe Tobolsky, an MDA paramedic who among the first to arrive at the scene.
“A number of lightly injured people were at the entrance and civilians ushered me to a seriously injured person who was lying down, unconscious with a head injury,” he said. “While large numbers of MDA teams were searching the scene and providing medical treatment to other injured victims, I put him in a Mobile Intensive Care Unit and provided him with lifesaving medical treatment, including ventilating him, and evacuated him to Shaare Zedek hospital.”
In order to avoid overwhelming any single medical center, the injured were taken by Magen David Adom to five separate hospitals — Shaare Zedek, Hadassah Mt. Scopus, and Hadassah Ein Kerem, all in Jerusalem, Chaim Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, and Shamir Medical Center/Assaf Harofeh in Ramla.
