The wounded man begged: “Save me, I have children”

MDA routinely operates two helicopters per shift: one helicopter based in the south at Sde Teyman and one in the north based at Poriya Medical Center. Another reserve helicopter serves as back up for the helicopter fleet. That Saturday, the three helicopters operated continuously in the southern sector, treating and evacuating 21 seriously and critically wounded people from various locations to hospitals. Ambulances and intensive care units waited for them at the hospital landing pads, and quickly transported the casualties from the helicopter to the emergency rooms. These ambulances also helped transport dozens of other wounded people who arrived by IDF helicopters from the hospital landing pads to the emergency rooms.

The helicopters are staffed by senior and veteran paramedics who have undergone special training. MDA helicopter teams are usually dispatched to treat people injured in road accidents or work accidents that occur in locations far from a hospital, and sometimes they are even dispatched to treat patients who have had a heart attack or suffered a stroke in a remote location in order to bring them quickly to a medical center that can provide treatment when time is a significant factor for their chances of recovery.

That Saturday, Dr. Shafir Botner, who also serves as the manager of the MDA Paramedics School, heard the sirens and left his home in southern Israel to the MDA station to help treat possible casualties from rocket hits. Very early in the morning he still did not know about the infiltration of the terrorists. He talked to Shimon Elkobi, the region manager, who asked him to go to Ofakim or Be’er Sheva.

“I arrived at the HaNasi Junction,” Shafir recalls. “To my right was the road to Be’er Sheva, to the left was the road to Ofakim. I hesitated where to go, and decided that if rockets fell in Ofakim I wouldn’t be able to help much, and so I turned in the direction of Be’er Sheva. This is how I was saved for the first time, because by that time the terrorists had already positioned themselves at the entrance to Ofakim and were shooting at anyone who passed on the road. Had I continued, I would probably have been hit and possibly killed.”

Shafir arrived at the MDA Station in Be’er Sheva and started helping teams there. However, within a short time he received a phone call. “I was asked to go to our helipad in Sde Teyman to operate a third helicopter together with Rami Miller, manager of the medical division and MDA’s chief paramedic. Two MDA helicopters – including one staffed with our colleagues Ziv Shapira and Moshe Salah – were already working tirelessly and treating casualties, and now our help was needed. We left everything and drove to the landing pad. We got into the helicopter to organize it. Rami Miller and Dr. Raphael Strogo, the deputy manager of medicine at MDA, were with me. Before I was able to go inside the helicopter, I received a phone call from the call center informing me that in five minutes three seriously wounded soldiers would arrive at the landing pad. We were ready within minutes and received the wounded soldiers. From that moment on, we treated and evacuated casualties in one long shift that began on Saturday morning and continued until Monday.

I remember several events that are etched in my memory. One of the many times we evacuated wounded people to Barzilai Hospital, we were caught by a siren warning of rockets. We couldn’t reach a protected area and so we lay down on the floor as required by the guidelines. Suddenly, an agitated woman ran up to us with a baby in her arms, screaming. She had come to the emergency room with her son, who had been wounded in an earlier rocket attack, and was unable to reach a protected area. She was helpless. It was amazing how instinctively we all protected them with our bodies.”

During one of the evacuations, shrapnel from a rocket hit the helicopter’s rotor. The team experienced moments of anxiety and fear of death, and they even reported on their radio: “We were hit.” But fortunately, the pilot landed the helicopter safely. Moments later, Shafir discovered that his report on the radio, which was heard by hundreds of MDA men and women with great fear, even reached his family. “We were supposed to transfer three wounded people from Barzilai to another hospital. We were in the helicopter with the wounded, treating them, with engine on. Suddenly, we heard a rocket siren and then a very loud ‘boom.’ It was indescribably scary. I was sure we had been hit, that’s how it felt. I reported on the radio that we had been hit.” While he was trying to treat the wounded in the helicopter, the pilot successfully managed to turn off the engine. “We realized that we were not out of danger yet. We went outside the helicopter since we were afraid that a fire might break out at any moment. We evacuated the wounded from the helicopter to protect them. In retrospect, it turned out that shrapnel had hit the rotor. When I had a moment to look at the phone, I saw that my daughter had looked for me many times. She volunteers at MDA and heard that an MDA helicopter was hit – and she knew I was on shift in the helicopter and was terrified.

One of the policemen we treated had been involved in a gunfight in the Nova party area and had been shot in the abdomen. He was very badly wounded; he lost a lot of blood… He asked me if he was already dead. I told him he was alive. I calmed him down. He begged me: ‘Save me, I have children.’ Of course, I did everything I could for him and the other wounded victims. I fought for his life with all the means at my disposal, and I hoped he would survive. For a long time, I didn’t know what happened to him. Not long ago, my brother-in-law, who is a policeman, told me about his friend, also a policeman, who had been seriously wounded and is trying to contact the team that treated him. It turned out that it was indeed the same wounded person. He recovered and I was privileged to meet him. There is no greater joy than this. The victims we treated that day were at the center of the disaster. We treated a young woman who had been seriously wounded at the music festival; we treated a policeman who had been wounded by an RPG; another wounded man had been shot in the stomach. Another and another, like in a bad movie,” says Shafir, “and throughout all of this, rockets were raining on us all the time.”

On the flight back I looked around – I felt like I was in a war movie. The floor of the helicopter was bloody, we were flying over explosions and smoke; there were sirens constantly. It was unbelievable. At night, we treated a very badly wounded soldier; he was bleeding everywhere, emptied of his blood. He was accompanied by two soldiers with gunshot wounds – one in the leg and the other in the hand. They lingered a bit outside the helicopter. I hurried them to evacuate the wounded man as quickly as possible. Suddenly, the wounded man with the bullet in his leg started running, even faster than me and told me: ‘If it’s urgent, It’s urgent.’ We landed at Hadassah Hospital, and in order to save time, the wounded soldiers helped us carry their wounded friend’s stretcher. I was watching from the side – one wounded man with a bullet in his leg and a tourniquet, the other with bullets in his hand and a tourniquet, were carrying their wounded friend’s stretcher with us so as not to lose a moment, with such friendship and devotion – this is something unusual. For me, the people who fought there that Saturday were superhumans, superheroes. Once you look at them, you understand where our slogans ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ [The People of Israel are One] and ‘Yachad Nenatze’ach’ (Together We Will Win] came from. All these clichés are true,” Shafir concludes.