With summer vacation in full swing throughout Israel, United Hatzalah medics around the country are being kept busy wherever they are, whether if they are on vacation with their own family or still at work.

Yesterday evening (Wednesday) in a fortunately effective form of long-distance “telephone tag” yet another life was saved. Someone in Tiberias mentioned in passing during a phone conversation to their friend in Haifa that in the fading sunlight they think they see a father and son drifting in a kayak far out in waters of the Kinneret. That person called the local United Hatzalah Farkas Haifa Division Coordinator Naftali Rottenberg to share their friend’s concern. Naftali didn’t hesitate for a minute and contacted United Hatzalah regional dispatcher Shai Almakim. Shai triangulated communication between the observer on the beach and the United Hatzalah Captain Leo V. Berger Water Rescue Unit.

Despite the darkness and evening swells, the rescue unit was scanning the waters off Bernicki Beach while United Hatzalah volunteers, both vacationers and locals, raced to the beach to assist with the rescue efforts. Sharp-eyed water rescue commander Yossi Oknin was still running grid patterns on the brand-new Captain Berger II rescue boat with his searchlights on, when the word came back that the father and son had managed to fight their way back to shore. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Yossi gave an instinctive final sweep of the area when something caught his attention in the distance. He deftly maneuvered the rescue boat towards the movement and spotted a 17 year-old boy barely treading water, 2 kilometers out between to the Shikmim and Bernicki beaches.

Yossi and fellow rescuer Moshe Trebelsi hauled in the barely conscious teen. After initial fluid replacement therapy on the boat and some additional care from the medics on the beach the boy was released. The boy, a solid swimmer, mentioned that he had gone swimming in the late afternoon but an undertow had carried him far from the beach. He approximates that he was in the water for close to 3 hours but that he didn’t think he had more than a few minutes before he would have gone under. His parents had heartfelt words of praise to Hashem and his “angels in orange” on land and in the water who miraculously saved their son.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)