After the Rockets, A Scourge of Fires

Israeli Veterans Help Fight Blazes in North

A policeman inspects an apartment in Kiryat Shemona, northern Israel, after a Hezbollah rocket strike. The recent barrage has caused dozens of fires. (By David Guttenfelder -- Associated Press)

ROSH PINNA, Israel, Aug. 5 -- Their day began at dawn and ended at dusk, and they landed only to refuel and reload. Artillery shells and rockets whizzed past their windscreens as they swooped and soared, dive-bombing targets near Israel's northern border Saturday.

Since the war here ignited more than three weeks ago, Aharaon Berenson and Svika Rosen, two decorated combat pilots, have been among the busiest airmen around, with no days off and too many missions for too few men.

But Berenson and Rosen are not fighting Hezbollah. They're fighting fires caused by the militant group's unprecedented barrage of rockets.

The two graying veterans of Israel's 1973 Yom Kippur War are part of a team of 10 professional crop-dusters drafted back into service by the government to help control blazes caused by rockets pummeling the dry earth. On Saturday they spent nine hours in the air, battling a dozen infernos, dropping water and a flame-retardant red chemical from their tiny, yellow propeller planes.

"This is our part in the war," said Berenson, 58, stretching his legs and chugging black coffee during a brief afternoon respite at Rosh Pinna's tiny Mahaneim airfield, a few miles from the border. "This is the most beautiful part of Israel, and we're not going to let them turn it black."

Just as he untied his boots and began to unzip his orange flight suit, a radio blared to life with word of new fires, including one chewing its way up a hillside toward a clutch of low-slung homes in nearby Tzfat. He and Rosen jogged to the runway, climbed aboard their still-idling planes and took off at 3:05 p.m., 12 minutes after he had landed.

More than any other conflict in Israel's history, the past three weeks have required herculean efforts from the country's emergency services: police officers and medics, hospital workers and firefighters. The 1967 and 1973 wars against Arab countries, like the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, were far bloodier for the soldiers than this war has been. But never before has the country's civilian population been so directly in the line of fire.

"All the wars until now were inside Lebanon or Syria or Egypt," said Moshe Mosko, a spokesman for the national fire and rescue commission. "Now it's inside Israel itself."

Hezbollah's rocket attacks have recently averaged more than 200 a day, keeping emergency crews dashing to remote corners of the country at a moment's notice.

"The only time that comes close was a period in the second intifada, in 2002, when the suicide bombings were happening almost every day," said Yonatan Yagodovsky, an official with Magen David Adom, Israel's main emergency service. "But I think this is far worse than even the busiest of those days. It is very, very constant in dozens of communities all day long. There is simply no rest."

The group, which has 270 ambulance crews on hand throughout the north, has been rotating up to 40 medics at a time from parts of the country that are beyond rocket range. Medical centers have also shifted to a war footing. Haifa's Rambam Hospital, the main trauma center in the north, has cleared patients out of north-facing buildings, lined up beds at the main entrance in anticipation of the next attack and converted its cafeteria into a ward for treating shellshocked patients.

Commanders of Israel's police force, which is largely responsible for coordinating emergency responses, say they feel particularly helpless against the rocket barrages.