By DELPHINE MATTHIEUSSENT and MATTI FRIEDMAN
The Associated Press
Monday, August 7, 2006; 4:43 PM
HAIFA, Israel -- In a hospital basement with walls of bare concrete and a ceiling crisscrossed by yellow and blue pipes, a patient just back from heart surgery lay immobile on a bed.
Rambam Hospital in the northern city of Haifa had just moved many patients underground, and workers on ladders stood around the man Monday, hooking up an electric line to power the monitors checking his vital signs.
With northern Israel under Hezbollah rocket bombardment for nearly a month, hospitals in the war zone are working around the clock and under fire to protect those in their care.
Although hundreds of rockets have hit Haifa and its suburbs, Rambam Hospital functioned almost normally until Sunday, when three Haifa residents were killed in an intense barrage.
That's when the hospital decided to clear out the basement, which had been used to store equipment, and move a quarter of its 500 patients _ with their respirators, oxygen tanks and IV drips _ underground.
Dr. Rafael Beyar, the physician overseeing the move, said it took the hospital this long to act because a lull in rocket strikes on the city had led staff to believe "there would be no more attacks on Haifa."
But after Sunday's barrage, he said, "we didn't have a choice."
The patients were lined up in rows Monday, with few curtains to provide privacy and toilets far from the beds.
"There is no order, no room numbers," complained Viki Levi, a nurse in the oncology department. "I don't even have a chair."
Shoshana Berechit, a 58-year-old patient in the neurology ward, said she understood why the move was necessary. "I'd rather be here. At least it's safe," she said. "When I heard the explosions last night it was so strong that I thought the building was falling on us."
In the coastal town of Nahariya, just five miles south of the Lebanon border, the hospital has been functioning underground since just after fighting broke out July 12.
In the hospital's bustling bomb shelter, paper signs taped to the walls _ Urology, Geriatrics, Neurology _ mark the wards.
Unlike Haifa, Nahariya was not taken by surprise, having suffered rocket attacks from Lebanon dating to the 1970s. Its hospital had rooms ready in bomb shelters and had trained its 2,000-member staff to respond.
The green ridge that marks the border with Lebanon was clearly visible from a blown-out window in the ophthalmology ward on the hospital's top floor.
One room was ravaged: a bed bent out of shape, the floor covered in rubble, blackened and burned insulation ripped from the ceiling, the walls perforated by ball bearings.
A Hezbollah rocket crashed through the window July 28, two weeks after patients were moved downstairs. No one was in the ward except for Max, the goldfish, who survived unharmed and now occupies a place of honor at the nurses' station in the bomb shelter.
Dr. Uri Rehany, the head of the ophthalmology department, said he had seen 20 dead and wounded from the Hezbollah rocket attacks, most of them hit by ball bearings packed into the rockets' warheads.
"They simply want to kill as many of us as possible," Rehany said.
Moving the patients has not affected Rehany's work. After brothers Tiran and Aryeh Tamam were killed in a rocket attack last week, their family donated their corneas. Rehany transplanted them into the eyes of four people, helping restore their vision.
One patient's house was hit by a rocket while he was receiving the transplant, Rehany said, adding: "We've become used to this mix of happiness with tragedy."
While hospitals here are functioning, Israelis in bomb shelters across the north are having difficulty getting access to routine medical care. The army has tried to fill the gap, sending medical teams all over the north.
In one bomb shelter in Carmiel, three army medics _ women in their 20s called up for reserve duty _ checked on residents.
"We see a lot of kids who are too frightened to leave the shelter to see a doctor," said Noga Nativ, 26, in green army fatigues and a flak jacket.
A few hours earlier, Nativ's team went to a shelter occupied by elderly Russian immigrants who clamored to have their blood pressure checked. "Part of our job is just to show up and reassure people," she said.
Anyone needing emergency medical care is taken to the hospital in Nahariya.
Ilana Caspi, head nurse in Nahariya's pediatric ward, has treated hundreds of traumatized children. One 7-year-old girl was brought in apparently paralyzed from the waist down, she said, and it took doctors time to determine that she was not actually injured _ just traumatized.
Psychiatric care helped the girl walk again.
Hospital staff are doing their best to care for patients, Caspi said, but the doctors and nurses are going through the same trials.
"We all brave the rockets coming to work, and many of us have had our houses hit," said Caspi. "We're all traumatized."