Israeli Veterans Help Fight Blazes in North
By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 6, 2006
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.
"Usually I have the feeling that I can protect my public," said Nir Mariash, the police chief in Haifa, Israel's third-largest city and the place where more people have been killed by rocket attacks then anywhere else. "When it comes to things like terrorism, we've probably prevented hundreds of attacks by arresting people before they could hit us. But in this case there is nothing we can do except respond as fast as possible. Like everyone else, we hear the sirens and wait and see where they fall. It's frustrating."
Fires, the main threat to life and property besides the rockets themselves, have blackened broad swaths of once-verdant hillside across the north, consuming 35,000 acres of wilderness and more than a half-million trees, Mosko said.
They raged all over northern Israel again Saturday after an early afternoon rocket volley. Inside the firefighters' control room at Rosh Pinna airport, Yochai Brenner, a marketing executive for the crop-dusting firm, barked orders into the radio. Because of all the Israeli artillery fire coming from the nearby hills and valleys, he said, he tries to direct the planes away from active batteries.
"The war is the first time I have ever done this," he said. "But it took me a short time to learn."
The pilots call their current job more difficult than dog-fighting with enemy aircraft.
"This period is by far more intense. In the Yom Kippur War there were so many pilots, so we got some breaks. We don't," said Rosen, who said he was forced to eject over Egypt during that conflict and spent several months as a prisoner of war. "Here you have smoke and 2,500-foot cliffs and all the shooting. You have to go very low till you almost touch the fire. You better know the ability of your plane, or you'll be in a deep one."
Rosen and Berenson spent two hours Saturday over Tzfat, where by 3:30 p.m. the blaze was crackling and churning just across a narrow road from Itzak Tibi's house, his wife and three children peering nervously from inside. Tibi focused a feeble stream of water on the ground, hoping to stop the rampaging fire, he said, as the planes circled high above.
"I don't know what else to do," Tibi said. "I can't leave my house to burn."
One plane, then the other, began to dive at breakneck speed, coming within a few yards of the road. With the flames lapping at its wheels, one spewed a trail of red chemical into the blaze, soaking Tibi and a few neighbors gathered to watch.
But, despite pass after pass by Rosen, the flames kept coming, engulfing the neighborhood in a thick fog of smoke. Then the warning sirens sounded across Tzfat, signaling more rockets on the way.
Tibi ran inside and told his family to pack. They emerged minutes later, each with a little bag. Tears streamed down his two daughters' faces, from smoke or fear or both. His son was wearing only one flip-flop. They piled into a white Suzuki sedan and drove away.
A half-hour later, however, the fire's spread had been halted by the pilots' barrage. They returned to Rosh Pinna, content to let it burn itself out. Back at the airport, just before dusk, they sat in the control room, their hair streaked chemical red, their faces exhausted.
Another pilot joined them, and they swapped stories and smoked cigarettes for a while before the radio squawked again, asking for someone to make another run at a fire near the Sea of Galilee.
"I'm sorry," Rosen said, rising from his chair and grabbing his helmet. "I am to be running."
Special Correspondent Tal Zipper contributed to this report.
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