2023-10-13 00:38:00
In the first basement of Haifa’s Rambam hospital, dozens of cars are waiting, quite naturally, for their owners to return. But on the two lower floors, all the cars have disappeared, replaced by more than a thousand beds, in anticipation of attacks against northern Israel from Lebanon.
On levels -2 and -3 of this large university hospital center, some 40,000 m2 of parking spaces have been redeveloped into a care center. Large fabric shrouds run across the ceiling, diffusing conditioned air throughout the impressive space.
Monitors are connected, showers, sinks and toilets connected to the water and sanitation network. Between the boxes, connections allow oxygen connections, or the evacuation of human secretions by health personnel.
In “the largest underground hospital in the world”, the entire underground infrastructure was designed before the construction of the establishment’s parking lots, which was completed in 2014, according to its management.
Sockets, pipes and installations of all kinds, normally hidden by plates, become accessible almost instantly when a crisis occurs.
This allowed this week the installation in just 30 hours of 1,300 beds and all the necessary sanitary and medical equipment in the third basement. Some 700 others were being installed on the upper floor on Thursday during the AFP visit.
Engaged militarily against the Gaza Strip in response to attacks by Palestinian Hamas on Saturday in the south of the country, Israel is preparing for a possible conflagration on its northern flank, where border incidents have resumed in recent days.
At Rambam hospital, lessons were learned from the Israeli offensive against Lebanon in 2006, which was accompanied by numerous shots against Haifa, a port city located around fifty kilometers from the Lebanese border, until then outside range of Hezbollah projectiles.
Some 400 rockets then rained around the establishment, hitting its parking lot, remembers Philippe Abecassis, a 62-year-old anesthetist. All the patients had been lowered into the cellars, whose floors were covered with sand and where no arrangements had been made, says a nurse.
The digging of a parking lot, already recorded, had therefore been rethought “with the idea that if a war returns – and unfortunately in the 75 years that Israel has existed, we know that wars come back -, we could use this parking lot as an underground hospital “, explains Dr. Abecassis.
“Not a parking lot”
“I didn’t think I would see this during my career. But hey, here we are,” sighs the doctor, for whom this measure is “philosophically very difficult [à] understand”, when “hospitals should be sanctuaries”.
On Wednesday, a rocket hit a hospital in Ashkelon, in southern Israel, without causing any casualties. “We cannot count on luck,” says Michael Halberthal, the director of the structure, “we must offer [aux patients] a fortified place where they will be safe.
At Rambam hospital, the first basement, still used as a parking lot on Thursday, must therefore serve, in the event of a chemical attack, as a decontamination airlock and patient triage area.
Four underground operating theaters are planned, in addition to the fourteen existing on the upper floors, the construction of which has been reinforced in the event of possible bombings.
Food, oil, oxygen, medicines are stored in sufficient quantity for the site to be self-sufficient for three days, welcomes Dr. Halberthal, who “hopes that peace” will prevail and that the underground hospital “will not have to be used “.
It had been during the Covid-19 crisis, where the staff had understood how “difficult it is for patients to be treated in a parking lot, without separation”, particularly hearing, allowing them to be isolated from the cries of others, observes Dr. Abecassis.
Posters of flowers had been stuck on each wall, between the rows of beds, in this place without natural light where the feeling of suffocation could be intense for the most claustrophobic.
“This place may not be the most beautiful, but it is the safest in the hospital,” replies Einat Perez, deputy head of nurses.
On Wednesday, while sirens wailed throughout the north of the country due to “suspicion of air infiltration”, finally ruled out by Israel, around a hundred patients were taken down to the basement, to be brought back a few hours later in their rooms, in peace, according to Dan Kammoun, an Israeli reservist.
“This place is incredible,” insists Nurse Perez. “It’s a hospital, not a parking lot.”
13/10/2023 00:36:33 – Haifa (Israel) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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