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Heroic Tales from Oct. 7

(Jerusalem Post) Barbara Sofer - Itzik Kara, 56, father of three, is a nurse, a paramedic, and an administrator at Hadassah Hospital. He's experienced in intensive care, recovery, and surgical nursing. Kara served as a combat medic in the Givati infantry brigade and was previously an ambulance driver for Magen David Adom. In his spare time, Kara is a volunteer team head for United Hatzalah emergency services. "By 7:05, I realized that the Hamas Nukhba special forces were inside Sderot. I am the head of a paramedic team, and I had an ambulance parked outside. Nonetheless, at 7:30 the dispatcher at United Hatzalah told me the situation was too dangerous to head south. But...by 7:45 the decision was made to send teams to rescue as many wounded as possible, danger or not." Kara posted a call for volunteers' help on the Modi'in United Hatzalah WhatsApp group. Sergio Geralnik, 59, and his wife, Caryn Gale, 58, both paramedics, responded, as did Noemi Dray, 27, a nursing student. At the United Hatzalah office, the four volunteers gathered their equipment and suited up in bulky flak jackets and helmets. Rockets were flying, but they kept on driving and entered Sderot, where a battle between Hamas and the police for the police station was raging. They were advised by local paramedics that it was impossible to get close enough to help. They got a call from a military vehicle carrying a soldier with a head wound. They inserted an IV, provided oxygen and staunched the bleeding while racing him to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba. They evacuated a second soldier to Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon. The team continued all day, picking up and treating the wounded. Hamas sharpshooters were positioned along the road they traveled. Kara said, "Only on Sunday did I realize what danger we were in on Oct. 7. We were concentrating so hard on caring for the wounded that, even though we saw the murdered bodies and we heard the rockets, we somehow had the ability to ignore them and keep working....All the patients we rescued survived."
2024-12-01 00:00:00
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