Fast Draw – Winter in October, The Nerve
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עברית (Hebrew)
Arie Egozi
If any further proof was needed that in the state of Israel, all the bodies meant to be dealing with emergency scenarios are not worth anything, we got one yesterday when a wind, slightly stronger than a regular winter wind, caused a disruption in the every day life of thousands of people.
Power shortages, disabled traffic lights, cellular networks down or only half working, floods – and that’s just a part of it.
Winter caught us off-guard. It arrived in October – how rude of it. Nothing was prepared: Local authorities did not clean the sewage systems, trees near power lines were not trimmed, things like cranes were not strengthened in order to prepare for strong winds, and even that’s not all of it.
Israel has so many bodies that are meant to prepare the nation for states of emergency. They have people with pretty nice paychecks, company cars and nice offices. But in the field, nothing is being done.
This situation has been going on for years but none of the ministers involved are dealing with it. Its much nicer to blabber off about the national issue, where things are bad either way so its hard to point any fingers.
This failure is crying out to the skies literally. Even after this storm, in Israeli terms, has passed and left the damages, the way they were handled was lame to say the least. The biggest failure was with the Israel Electric Corporation: only a nighttime deliberation at the labor court brought back the employees to fully work and handle the situation.
The need to stop the monopoly of the electric corporation has been a years-long debate. The debate is still on.
We, the citizens, talked to voice recordings of representatives in the electric company yesterday explaining that due to the load, we have no one to talk to.
And if you think the minister in charge – whoever that is – will call the heads of the electric company this morning and explain to them that they have to go home, you are gravely mistaken.
No one is taking responsibility or throwing it on their subordinates.
If you think that Israel is prepared for other cases of emergency, such as war, earthquake, a massive cyber attack – you are wrong. Nothing is prepared. There are headquarters with impressive names, a list of people receiving a paycheck and business cards with impressive titles but that is pretty much it.
There are bodies providing many people with work but their work has done nothing to improve the country’s readiness to emergency scenarios.
How does this happen in a country such as Israel? Very simple. Most ministers just aren’t dealing with their own offices business. You dont get to be in the headlines with operations to clean sewage systems or backing up the traffic-light system. Almost all ministers want to deal with national affairs, even if their relation to such affairs is thin.
So if you intend to sleep quietly after the damages of yesterday’s storm are fixed, you are naive at best.
