Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan held a status briefing on the upcoming storm that is expected to hit Israel beginning on Wednesday with all of the rescue services in Israel. The briefing was held in order to assess the readiness of emergency services in the face of the storm.

The briefing included representatives from the police, the fire department, prison services, Magen David Adom, the Home Front Command, the National Security Council, and representatives from local governments.

Minister Erdan emphasized that the main objective was to prevent the loss of life. Therefore he prioritized the dispatching of rescue workers and volunteers over the dispatching of workers to fix infrastructure issues damages.

Erdan instructed rescue organizations to be in constant contact with local governments and directed the local governments, particularly in areas that suffered flooding last week to reinforce their infrastructure and to ensure that the most vital services, such as drainage, sewage, and water, be maintained. With this in mind, Minister Erdan instructed that all dispatching stations within each of the dispatch and command centers of every rescue organization be fully staffed so that no emergency phone call be missed from now until Friday night.

Erdan also ordered that the fire department diving teams work together with the police and utilize police helicopters in order to make sure that they arrive in a timely fashion at any emergency requiring their services and to work together with the Home Front Command and the IDF to use their vehicles if the need arise to rescue civilians wherever they may be trapped as fast as possible.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)