Sometimes what kills people during rocket attacks isn’t the blast or the shrapnel. Sometimes it’s an incident that takes place during the mad dash to seek shelter as rockets are raining down on the neighborhood.
Such was the case Wednesday, when a 43-year-old woman collapsed in cardiac arrest in her home while running to her family’s safe room during a rocket attack. The rockets, launched from Lebanon, marked the first time Israel’s north has seen rockets since the country’s 2006 war with its northern neighbor.
When her family called 101, MDA’s emergency response number, EMTs at the regional operations center instructed them how to initiate CPR and immediately dispatched a Mobile Intensive Care Unit ambulance.
“We arrived within minutes,” said Hanadi Al-Gadban, an MDA paramedic who arrived aboard the MICU with fellow paramedic Yoel Lewinger.
“We provided advanced life support treatment, including ventilation, cardiac compressions, [antiarrhythmic] medications, and electric shocks. After long minutes of lifesaving efforts, her heart began to beat and we evacuated her in critical condition to the hospital.”
Since Israel’s conflict with Hamas began on May 17, two Israelis have died as the result of injuries sustained running to bomb shelters.
The four rockets fired from Lebanon Wednesday were particularly alarming, officials said, because they marked the first projectiles fired from Israel’s northern border, raising fears that Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based terror group, was joining Hamas’ conflict with Israel. However, Israel now believes the rockets originated with Palestinian groups based in Lebanon and not with the better-armed Hezbollah terrorist organization.
In other incidents Wednesday, a 10-year-old girl was also injured running to a bomb shelter in northern Israel when she was struck by a car while dashing across the street. She was moderately injured and taken by MDA ambulance to the hospital.
Meanwhile, in Israel’s south, the epicenter of the conflict, a 73-year-old man was treated by Magen David Adom paramedics after he was knocked down by the blast wave when a rocket struck his home.
“The injured man was with his family in the basement of the house when it was hit by a rocket,” said Alex Kosinov, an MDA paramedic. “Upon arrival, we found him fully conscious, and after medically examining him, we evacuated him to Barzilai Hospital in stable and moderate condition.”
Since hostilities began last week, 10 people have been killed by rockets in addition to the two people who died from injuries sustained running to bomb shelters. MDA has treated 341 people for rocket-related injuries, seven of whom were critically injured.
At least two Israelis have died as the result of injuries sustained in sectarian riots and 195 people have been injured, 10 of them critically.
