When Haifa burned • 5 years since the great fire

5 years ago today, smoke filled the skies of Haifa and many lives changed forever

5 years ago, on 24/11/21, at 11 am, Haifa started burning. The first point where the fire started was at the check post. Then, within minutes, fire began to burn in several locations - Ahuza, the new Romema, Givat Oranim, Freud, Disraeli and other neighborhoods. The sky turned red and in those moments, when no one knew it, the lives of many in Haifa changed beyond recognition. At the end of the day, 2,500 homes were damaged, all of which have been renovated over the years, except for one building in Freud.

The advantage turned into a disadvantage

The worst hit neighborhood was Givat Oranim, especially Zalman Shazar street. On a daily basis, the advantage of the neighborhood is that it is surrounded by pine trees, but it turns out that when it burns down, the advantage becomes a significant disadvantage. The pine trees next to residences ignited the houses, and it took the firefighters time to control the blaze.

Luckily, no one was hurt

Thousands of units were damaged, and still, in this huge fire, a miracle also happened, when no one was hurt, even though the fire raged in so many areas.

The Minister of Finance at the time, Moshe Kahlon, announced even before the fire was extinguished, that it was a national disaster, and the insurance companies whose residents had been paying for many years, did not agree to pay for the damages. Instead, the Ministry of Finance transferred compensation for the damage to each family whose home was damaged. The one who was Kahlon's right-hand man at that time and came here to help the residents was David Etzioni. Etzioni sat down in the sports hall and gave his mobile number to everyone who asked.

Burns tourists

The fire took place on Thursday. The following Saturday, the new Romema neighborhood was filled with tourists. People came to see with their own eyes the burnt houses. Since some of the houses were broken into, people actually entered them, toured the apartments and yards, to see up close what was left after the fire consumed them.

Yona Yahav, who was the mayor at the time of the fire: "The handling of the fire and the reconstruction of the city was magnificently organized"

"When the fire broke out in the bay in the area of ​​the fire department's headquarters," says former mayor Yona Yahav, "I was convinced that they would immediately take control of the fire. What happened is that the regime of spirits blew the pine trees' branches, and wherever a tree went, another fire broke out. That's why Fires were created at such large distances. Unfortunately, we had experience from 2010 in dealing with huge fires. We convened the HML and started deploying rescue units.

A huge headquarters in the sports hall

Our biggest fear was the gas station in Rome. We set up a huge headquarters in the sports hall. We feared that if the fire reached the gas station, it would threaten the lives of the population in the area. Luckily it didn't happen. The principle according to which we acted was to reach every place where there was a fire or where there was a danger of it. I myself was in Ramot Sapir, I saw fire engulfing the area and I helped evacuate a nearby school."

60,000 residents were evacuated

"It was important to us to make sure that no one would be in danger, and so it was. It was also thanks to the fact that the residents responded to our orders. We evacuated a total of 60,000 residents. We also evacuated neighborhoods where the fire had not yet hit. We especially evacuated areas where there are not enough exits from the neighborhoods. residents to collection centers until we found a solution. The only thing I regret is that I went and brought a budget for building roads from the imprisoned neighborhoods, but residents sabotaged it and it's a shame."

The restoration after

"Our HML provided service to people in 5 languages: Arabic, Hebrew, English, Russian and Amharic. After the fire itself came the turn of the restoration. We made a so-called green loan. We needed tens of thousands of trees and bushes. We appealed to all the developers and contractors, and told them that if they start construction and need to uproot trees, they should call us, and the Haifa Municipality, free of charge, will take the trees to them. We were in Metula, there is a poetry festival there, we took 1,000 trees from there, because they established a cultural center project there. These trees are today on Freud Road. The residents needed to see the restoration of the city, so we placed the trees in Ramot Sapir before planting them all over the city. We brought in landscape architects and with their help we planted the trees."

make it easier for those whose house burned down

Yahav continues: "I wanted the residents to have an easy time dealing with property tax. We proposed to Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon to add property tax to our HML. We gathered the residents whose houses were damaged in the auditorium, for a conference of several hours with property tax. The residents there asked every question they had. There is one house that has not been renovated to this day due to a neighbor dispute, it is on Freud Road. Apart from that, all the houses are renovated."

Schools were damaged

Several schools were damaged by the fire. Reali Beit Biram was damaged and so was the elementary school Romma Nigonim. The schools were evacuated of students and then renovated and classes resumed as usual. In the Romema neighborhood, because of the damage to the school and homes, the students throughout the year received help in the form of art therapy.

A life changing experience

There are life-changing experiences. Losing all your possessions in an instant is definitely an experience that unsettles you. At the same time, it is very reassuring to know that no one was killed or injured, and at the end of the day, money comes and money goes. After the fire and the renovation of the houses, residents started to return to the renovated houses, but many of them put the houses up for sale, because of the unpleasant memories of the fire.

A New Beginning

On the one hand, it is unpleasant to see all your possessions go up in flames, on the other hand it is an opportunity for a new beginning. When our house burned down in Rumma, not all the things were burned, but there were already people working in the house, and I asked them to throw away what didn't burn. We accumulate so many unnecessary things during life, parting with them allows us to bring new things into life. I also think that such experiences teach you a lesson about yourself, your strengths, your ability to deal with a difficult reality. Certainly, who I was on Thursday at 7:50 when I left the house for the last time before the fire, is absolutely not who I was when I returned to my renovated house, 4 months later.

Has Haifa learned a lesson from the fire?

The answer is of course - no. Today's Haifa is not the Haifa of 5 years ago. Yahav understood the need for exit roads from imprisoned neighborhoods. The current mayor of the city, Dr. Einat Kalish Rotem, received a budget for such roads from the Ministry of Transportation, with the condition that there be a matron from the University of Carmel Sharfati, and she said - no thanks. Within a minute and a third, the Ministry of Transportation transferred the money to another city. Rumma has 4 entrances and exits. When the neighborhood was burning and parents And grandparents arrived hysterically to evacuate their children from the schools and kindergartens, they entered the neighborhood from any of the entrances. If a similar disaster had occurred in Dania, God forbid, or in Carmelia, there would have been a bottleneck there when the cars would have met, and then, most likely, we would have experienced a completely different type of disaster.

City emergencies

The one who was the head of operations during Yahav's time, David Luria, warns above all possible that it is necessary to make sure that there is a buffer zone between residential areas and vegetation, and that there is a correct way to make the buffer zones. And still, residents often turn to Hai Fe and describe in what apparently a shambolic way, the buffer zones near their house are made.

In Yahav's 15 years as mayor, he faced two huge fires and the fall of missiles on the city during the war, and he knew what to do and how to act in emergency situations. Let's wish for ourselves, for Haifa, and for the current leadership in the city, that we will never know how it functions in such extreme situations.