Fire and Rescue hotline reflects on Oct. 7

Fire and Rescue Commissioner Eyal Caspi. Photo courtesy of Israel Fire and Rescue Services.

By ITSIK SABAN

JNS

 

“Fire and Rescue Services, how can I help?”

“I’m in Sderot, near the library …, many dead. Hamas came in here and shot everyone at the bus stop by the library. Hurry, there are people here …, many people dead. They’re driving around in their vehicles shooting.

Unexpected Urgent Calls

This was one of the calls that reached the Fire and Rescue Services hotline in the first hours of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led onslaught on Israel, revealed here for the first time.

That morning, the calls flooding the hotline were unlike anything the operators had ever handled.

Not a house fire, not a car accident. These were emergency pleas from residents of the northwestern Negev, from Supernova festivalgoers, from terrified people begging for help in their last minutes.

Calls were cut off suddenly. Sometimes by a burst of gunfire, sometimes by a heavy silence.

Invisible Wounded

Since then, those operators have carried the invisible wounds of war.

They became unwilling witnesses to atrocities through a telephone line, young people who suddenly found themselves transformed from dispatchers into silent companions to death.

Idan Hazan, the shift commander at the Southern District command-and-control center, remembered the exact moment everything collapsed: “It was sudden. 6:30—boom, like the world just crashed. I’d never experienced anything like it.

Haunted

“The calls poured into the center without pause. Not routine reports of fires or accidents, but choked whispers from my own firefighters on their way to work: ‘Idan, they’re shooting at me.’”

In those minutes, Hazan and his team realized they were facing a nightmare for which there had been no preparation.

Operators had to answer mothers who could not reach missing fathers, desperate pleas for help tangled with reports of colleagues, firefighters and officers, who would never return.

Hazan recalled the shock of losing his own men: “Someone got a call from another center about one of our firefighters. At first, I said, ‘No way, I just saw him here at the station.’

“And then I realized it was true. Later I got word about another. Just the night before I had sent him to investigate a fire. He said, ‘No problem.’ By morning, I heard he’d been shot. How, God? How?

“I broke down at my parents’ house. They had never seen me like that. My friends were murdered, and I will never see them again,” Hazan lamented.

Massacre Memories

Amid the chaos, there were also the haunting calls from civilians: “I’ll never forget a call from a family in Kibbutz Be’eri or in Kibbutz Kfar Aza. They were screaming: ‘We’re burning, they set our house on fire!’—and then the line went dead.

“And you know you’ll never reach them. I felt powerless. My job is to save lives, and in that moment, I realized there was nothing I could do.”

Nearly two years later, those memories still accompany Hazan and the young operators who came to work that morning expecting a routine shift, only to leave scarred in ways no one can see.

Capt. Keren Hiba Naim, commander of the national command-and-control center, recalled the moment she grasped the scale of the massacre:

“From the first barrage, at 6:30, we understood this was something different. A massive rocket attack, across the country. We immediately reported up the chain of command, and within half an hour, the emergency protocols were activated.”

The operators, most of them just 21 to 27 years old, were forced to confront unthinkable dilemmas. A voice screamed down the line: “They’re shooting at me”—what do you say to that?

A family trapped in a burning house begged: “We’re holding the door shut, terrorists are outside. Can we let go? Can we stop holding?”

Response —Not Enough

Wounded civilians were given instructions on how to apply a tourniquet, something never part of the hotline’s job.

Naim described the operators’ inner torment: “The DNA of an operator is to take a call and pass it on to field crews, and that’s where it ends.

“On Oct. 7, it was totally different. We couldn’t send out firetrucks. There was no response on the ground. The calls began and ended with us. Some lasted 40 minutes, 50 minutes, an hour and a half.

“The operators stayed on the line, sometimes trying to calm people, sometimes just staying silent with them until the very last moment, until the call was cut by gunfire, or until there was no breath left to hear.”

In retrospect, Fire and Rescue Commissioner Eyal Caspi said, “Today we are much better prepared, far more professional, more determined and fully aware of the immense responsibility on our shoulders.

“I am proud of the service. It is small, but as I always say, these are people with soul. People willing to give everything, even their lives, for the citizens of Israel.

“Our mission is to build the national resilience that will allow the security forces, the IDF and all agencies to prevail on the battlefield, and to ensure the swift return of all the hostages and missing persons to their families,” he said.

Originally published by Israel Hayom.