Step Inside The ‘Safe Rooms’ Israelis Run To When The Rockets Rain Down
Several Israelis took the Daily Caller News Foundation into their safe rooms to show how they’ve been protecting themselves during rocket fire from Hamas.
The situation has grown all the more dire since Hamas terrorists infiltrated the country in a surprise attack Saturday, killing, maiming, raping and kidnapping hundreds of Israelis. Thousands of rockets have been fired by Hamas since Saturday, sending residents into safe rooms for protection.
War against Hamas—operational update day 7. pic.twitter.com/1XYn4ri6qQ
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 13, 2023
Israelis have minutes, and sometimes seconds depending on their proximity to the source of the rocket fire, to get in the safe rooms, which many have in their homes. The rooms often are outfitted with secure window covers and have a few pieces of furniture, if they are not regularly used as a room in someone’s house.
Israeli Tal Rachmani documented the moment she woke up Friday morning to sirens signaling an air attack. She showed in a video shared with the DCNF how residents in her apartment building must take shelter in the stairwell.
“So you have this door … you’re supposed to close it and it’s supposed to be sealed. We also have systems to defend if something is in the air. And then there is the window, you’re supposed to open it and you have this metal thing, you’re supposed to like take it up until the end and then you can lock it,” said Daniel Bilton, who survived Hamas’ attack on her kibbutz in southern Israel, as she showed her safe room in a video shared with the DCNF.
Noga Kamenetsky, who is a dual citizen of Israel and the U.S., showed us the safe room that is used by all of the residents of her apartment building.
“If there’s a siren, I leave my house, I’m on the top floor of my building, so I have to go down, I don’t have an elevator in my building. I have to go down the stairs with my baby,” Kamenetsky said in a video shared with the DCNF.
“There’s no AC or anything. This is our shelter and it’s one shelter for the whole building,” Kamenetsky said of the typically small rooms.
A safe room in Rotem Ben Eli’s home in Israel had a shower and toilet. She documented the moment a loud boom sounded after suspected rocket fire near her apartment.
All residents in Ben Eli’s building must go to the safe room at the bottom of the main stairs, usually for a few minutes, before they can go back to their lives.
All Israeli construction built after 1993 is required to have safe rooms to shield residents from rocket attacks, according to CNN, which emphasized that the rooms are not built to protect Israelis from armed incursions.
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