Bomb Shelter Upgrades

It's still Sivan. I'm still writing. It's still raining ballistic missiles.

So class, before we dive into the various types of missile threats and how to set your phone for the optimal series of alerts, alarms and telekinetic vibrations so frenetic that it would make a sex shop worker blush… let’s talk basics: Where do you go? When all of the surrounding skies are shrieking like your ex-best-friend now frenemy skipped right past the fingers in the water during the neighborhood sleepover and— exactly at the moment when your eyelids started fluttering from entry into the perfect REM sleep—let loose with the loud speakers from a Brooklyn fire department on a five alarm call. So you jump! Up from your sleep—Where, oh where, do you go?

If you are among the select few with the right mix of wealth and mazel you go to your MAMAD. Supposedly after a certain year new buildings in Israel were required to provide every residence with a room that converts very quickly into a safe-room. The windows have a very thick metal door that closes. The door to the room is an equally thick steel door. The walls are fortified concrete and built on a row of equally fortified rooms. Imagine a standard high-rise that’s hit by a missile: the building crashes down, but there is one row of rooms left standing. That it is the row of mamads.

At the highest end, a mamad is another beautiful bedroom in the house with comfortable places to sit, stocked with emergency supplies and its own ventilation. This is the rich or lucky man’s shelter. But even in beautiful seaside buildings, a mahmad can literally be a concrete closet next to the apartment. I saw someone’s today. Inside was one folding chair because that was the only space. When the door closes, you are sitting in a concrete vertical coffin. And this is a “best” option.

In many apartments, like the one where I stayed when I first arrived eleven months ago, the owners will choose aesthetics over safety and convert the safe-like steel door into a normal bedroom door- thus taking the safe out of safe-room. The illegality of it didn’t prevent an unscrupulous realtor from telling me on our Zoom walkthrough that I did not actually need the door. So how many Israelis actually have an effective mamad? A small percentage.

Next option is the building MIKLAT. A miklat is a shared safe room in an apartment building. The miklat is supposed to have the same safe-like steel door, no windows, and at some point many were being built with (very frightening looking) toilets and showers. (If you are wondering, the rest of the country relies on the bucket method of being way more personal with your Russian neighbors than you ever would have wished for. In case, my go-bag has a roll of toilet paper.) I have no doubt there are some beautiful or at least acceptably pleasant miklats around Israel.

The one in my building is like the vast majority that I have seen: a crumbling suffocating concrete basement with a regular door that may or may not stay closed. When I first came to this apartment I walked down, looked at the crumbled concrete, the mold, a few dead cockroaches and said, “Thanks I will pass on the miklat.” I thought there was no-way, no-how, not-ever that I would opt to spend a minute down in that dungeon.

Bat Yam changed that for me, and for many Israelis around the country. This week one of the hundreds of Iranian missiles got through Israeli defense systems and had impact in the heart of this heavily populated, completely residential community of working class families. In the middle of the night in their own beds, ten people lost their lives. They were not in safe rooms. Every piece of this fact has had enormous impact on Israelis today. One- the bomb got through. Two- it hit a heavy residential area and took down at least five high rises of apartments. Three- everyone who was in shelter survived. Those who were not died.

The biggest emotional impact are the videos. You see a children’s room with the bed all made. The mom opens the door and she is surrounded by actual rubble. Their entire home was destroyed while their child could be lying in bed. Most Israelis I speak to have re-adjusted their thinking on getting to shelter, at least for now. For about 12 hours that gave us a measure of comfort.

Then the deaths from last night were announced. The couple was, in fact, in their safe room but died when a ballistic missile hit exactly the space of the wall between two safe rooms causing them both to explode. So safe is a relative word these day.

But I digress…

The long and short of it is that now I, like the majority of Israelis or Very Nearly Israelis, go down to the miklat. And like most Israelis, we’re making the best of it. Each siren we see upgrades. First it was chairs. Then pillows. A fan. Cookies, nuts, and water. I contributed a table and electric kettle. By today’s mid-day missile break, we had coffee and tea service. Tonight, whenever we may get rudely awakened, we’re planning some art activities led by a resident who is an art therapist. If not tonight, some middle of the night missile soon. We probably have many in front of us.

If you do not have a building miklat or are out-and-about there are public shelters. These are not as numerous or easy to find as you may think. There is a lot of confusion, for example, about parking garages. I think that despite some really inspirational videos of people dancing in the garage with bombs going off (a daily occurrence—both the bombs AND the dancing), I believe we are not supposed to go to underground garages now because they could collapse. There is, frankly, a lot of confusion right now about best next options.

When the missiles were “just” from the Houthis or Hamas or Hezbollah or, whomever… so many people are filling our dance card with ballistic missiles that none of us really know who is our dance partner at any particular moment. But when we were just being bombed by everyone else but Iran, many of us followed the next best options list because it was infinitely more comfortable.

This was: if you can’t be in a dedicated safe room and you are in a building with internal staircase with no windows, go into the staircase (not the landings) in the first three floors and wait it out there. A lot of us did staircases if for no other reason then they are not so claustrophobic. Next best option was a room with no windows or exterior walls (bathrooms and kitchens can not count) I shook through several ballistic missile attacks in this way. This past year I’ve written some funny Almost Israeli pieces on my earlier choices (most of which were poorly done in retrospect.)

But with Iran, there are so many at once that some get through. And then they hit high-rise buildings in highly populated working class suburbs. And then people who were not in shelters die. And then people who were in shelters die. So we are more careful.

But then what? Do we just sit it out? Oh no! We redecorate. We introduce ourselves to neighbors. We play cards and drink coffee despite reflexively jumping when bombs intercept or land- we are underground and do not know. We play songs and dance. We share pictures of our kids. In the case of our miklat we find a way through a mix of French, Hebrew, Russian, English and Indian. If you listen-in on most conversations in my miklat every sentence has at least two languages. But in every language we understand this:

Even in a crumbly basement with missiles and sirens, alarms and middle of the night hijinks - we do not just live. We live fully. This is Israel. We’ve got this.

Am Yisrael Chai.

XO Gavriella