Every year about 4,000 people go missing in Israel. People who are cut off from the environment, home, family and means of communication. It is likely that at a moment's notice, within a radius of a few kilometers from each of us, a person who is subject to uncertainty and great distress will be missing.
The Israel Canine Unit (YCL) was founded to address this problem and to locate missing persons in a professional, effective and fast manner. Now, YCL, one of the leading civilian units in Israel that rescues hundreds of missing persons every year - is in danger of closing.
The lack of sufficient resources and the corona crisis brought the unit to the most difficult situation in its history after 20 years of activity.
Therefore the members of the unit opened in an emergency campaign of mass mobilization, with the aim of getting the unit back on its feet and continuing the activity.
"This is an emergency! To date we have saved hundreds and in order to be able to continue with dedication in saving lives - we need your contribution!"
Dodi Miblom, the commander of the northern district of the canine unit for Israel, Lahi Fe:
The problem at the moment is that on the one hand we have a lot of calls and they are increasing due to the corona virus, and on the other hand also due to the corona virus, we have almost no donations. We are currently holding the unit from our own money.
We are currently the most professional unit in Israel for finding missing persons. We have all kinds of dogs: search dogs, corpses, attack dogs and more. We know the whole country and know how to locate missing people on any route, and we know how to conduct a professional search and rescue operation that we set up.
As far as I understand, we are one of the only search and rescue organizations in Israel, apart from the military and police organizations, that know how to conduct a professional search and rescue operation.
Today we have about 300 volunteers in the unit (some of them also divers), about 70 dogs, horses, jeeps, drones, bicycles, boats. All this equipment is necessary for finding missing persons and we need hundreds of thousands of shekels every year to continue the work of the unit.
We are usually called when other units fail to locate the missing. There are units that know how to call us even before that. There hasn't been a case where we didn't find a missing person and then they found us.
In the Zebulon and Haifa area there are about 1600 missing people every year. It is about 5 missing persons every day and an amount of missing persons that reaches almost half of the total number of missing persons nationally. Just two days ago there was a missing person that we searched for in the Zebulun area, and we found him alive, most of the missing people we find alive.
In addition to our work in locating missing people, we also train units like others, we also know how to operate in the event of an earthquake or a missile attack. We also know how to locate criminals, trespassers and conduct a chase after them and catch them.
Despite all this, the situation at the moment is grim. The country is very well suited to ask for our help, but when we need help to exist we have no assistance. I hope that the situation will be resolved as soon as possible so that we can continue our extensive activities.
Video - The commander of the Zebulon station gives certificates of appreciation to the volunteers of the High Court (photo: Dodi Miblom)
The commander of the Zebulon police station in awarding certificates of appreciation to the YCL volunteers:
The Zebulon station has 100 missing persons per year, as befits the largest Tena in the country.. without your help and the public's and the volunteers' help, we will have difficulty doing our work well.. In many cases you literally save lives..
This is a necessary and important unit.