2008 Woodie Awards
Concrete caterpillers: Bomb shelters in the playgrounds
Children in Israel not phased by evidence of an ongoing conflict
Rick Burres
Issue date: 9/26/08 Section: The News
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In the town of Sderot, Israel, located one mile from the Gaza Strip, children live under threat of instant death. Psychological torture is taking its toll. Three-year-olds know where the nearest bomb shelters are. They are taught to run to the nearest shelter when the neighborhood "rocket alarm," sounds. The children of Sderot have 15 seconds to save their own lives.
The flight time of a Kassam rocket, fired from Gaza to Sderot, is about 15 seconds, according to Israeli Defense Force officials.
"After 15 seconds something explodes," one IDF official said. "If you are in the wrong place, that something will be you," the official added. Sderot began enduring these rocket attacks since October of 2001, according to Noam Bedein, director of the Sderot Media Center.
"We teach our children to run to the shelters while the Arabs teach theirs to run to the rooftops in order to act as human shields," Bedein said.
City officials have started designing community parks with integrated bomb shelters. These new shelters are designed to blend in with the park's other features. Giant concrete tubes with blast walls at each end are made to look like caterpillars.
Rick Burres can be reached at richard.burres@murraystate.edu.
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Yeshuaswarrior
posted 9/27/08 @ 7:28 PM CST
Thank you Rick for highlighting what the news is afraid to portray- the REAL victims, the Jews who try to live in peace while being bombarded by enemies who have INTERNATIONALLY VOWED THEIR DESTRUCTION. (Continued…)
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