“They shot at the ambulance, they’re shooting at the station, they’re shooting everywhere”

The story of the MDA Station in Sderot on October 7 is a story of teamwork, great ingenuity and dedication. At 6:30 a.m., MDA’s night shift was nearing its end, and the morning shift was about to begin. One of the intensive care units in Sderot was manned by paramedic Netanel Dahabash and David Azriel (Dado), one of the veteran drivers at Sderot’s MDA Station. During the night, the team dealt with a routine incident and returned to the station at about 6:00 a.m. There was complete silence, a morning breeze. They thought about their plans for that day and the time they would spend with their families on Simchat Torah.

Suddenly, sirens broke the silence. Even for MDA’s Sderot personnel, who are used to sirens, this was very odd – the lack of warnings, the early hour and the intensity of the incessant barrages. About 15 minutes later, they emerged from the safe room and heard gunfire. “We didn’t know exactly what it was, but we realized something very unusual was happening.”

Dahabash and Dado’s team – along with other night teams and other teams who came to man the morning shift – very quickly realized that they were in the middle of a battlefield. Everything happened fast. A vehicle rushed to the station with squeaking brakes, and someone shouted: “There are terrorists in Sderot!” They heard cries of pain from the wounded and calls for help. Everything gets mixed up in the memories of the team members. A very seriously wounded man was found in the car; he had been shot all over his body – chest, abdomen, limbs. The MDA staffers realize that there is also shooting inside the city and not just rocket alerts. They take the wounded man out of the car, close the entrance gate to the station and start treating him. Sderot residents who were hit by gunfire made their way to the place that symbolizes medicine and healing for them – the MDA Station. After the first wounded arrived, more and more wounded continued to come, car after car, all of them significantly wounded.

At this point, paramedic Amit Hananya arrived at the station. He left his home in Ashkelon and miraculously escaped encountering terrorists, and so did paramedic Giorgi Goliak. They were joined by paramedics Ariel Elbaz and Hillel Kholodenko, and the emergency medicine technicians Odelia Suissa, Yaniv Tayer and Meir. Realizing that this time the scenario is different, they decide to open an emergency treatment site inside the Station.  They set up a treatment area in the kitchen for the wounded who can walk independently, and, in the safe room, an area for treating the wounded who are supine. They got to work stopping bleeding, bandaging wounds and administering fluids and plasma, but soon realized that the wounded needed to be evacuated to a hospital in order to save their lives. At the same time, they saw the terrorists’ van driving through the streets and started thinking about a solution.

Elor Twil is a highly respected long-time volunteer at the MDA Station in Sderot, and a father of five, the youngest of whom was two weeks old. He kissed his wife and children, who remained in the safe room, and left his home for the MDA Station – as he does for every incident that takes place from time to time in rocket-stricken Sderot – to help his friends treat the wounded. No one knew it was a completely different kind of horror. When he arrived at the Station, Elor, who is an observant Jew, called his wife and told her: “There are terrorists in the city. Lock yourself in the safe room. Inform everyone you can.” Then he took the initiative, and prepared the bulletproof ambulance to evacuate the wounded. Immediately afterwards the paramedics Netanel Dahabash and Amit Hananya quickly put the wounded in the bulletproof ambulance and began evacuating them to the hospital, despite the terrorists who were still roaming the streets.

The bulletproof intensive care ambulance team evacuated the wounded until the wee hours of the night. At some point, Amit Hananya moved to another ambulance, and the paramedic Hadar Koltker joined the bulletproof ambulance in his place. First, they evacuated the wounded who were at the Station, and then from the rest of the city of Sderot, which had become a battlefield. It was a race of good against evil. The terrorists shot and wounded people and MDA teams reached the wounded, provided life-saving treatment and evacuated them to the hospital, at grave personal risk.

The paramedic who worked with Hadar on the night shift, Naor Sabag, also continued to treat the wounded throughout the day. “During the first evacuation, we understood the magnitude of the incident,” Elor recalls. “We saw bodies on the road, bodies inside vehicles, dozens of people dying. We treated the seriously wounded man on the way and felt as if we were going into the unknown. Such a familiar road, from the city to the hospital, the wheels of the ambulance know the road almost automatically, and now it looks like a scene from a horror movie. At some point, we were called to the Sderot police station. We treated brave fighters wounded all over their bodies, all bleeding, in very serious conditions caused by blood loss, treating them as best as possible and referring them for further treatment. On the way back from that evacuation, we were stopped by more fighters. One of them was very badly wounded and they asked for our help. He had a very serious head injury that required emergency treatment in the field to give him a chance of survival. We stopped on the side of the road, pumped medication, performed advanced life-saving treatment and evacuated him.”

I ask Hadar why they stopped for this kind of treatment in such a dangerous area, and she answers: “Because that’s who we are and that’s what we were meant to do. I understood that I’m in a dangerous area. Every minute is critical for me and for my wounded patients, but this is our mission, this is what I learned to do. I also felt safe with my team,” she recalls. When they returned to the Sderot police station, they heard gunfire and explosions, and realized that the incident is not close to ending. There are more and more wounded soldiers. Despite the indiscriminate killings in the streets, the team does not lose compassion and humanity. At one point, the team is called to an elderly couple in their home. The man was hit by gunfire, and his wife was sitting there with him. It quickly became clear that he did not survive. “What do we do now?” they asked. “It’s Saturday. There are terrorists in the city. Can we leave an elderly woman alone next to her dead husband’s body? We put her in a bulletproof ambulance and took her to her daughter, who lives in Sderot.”

Elor Twil, MDA Sderot volunteer