Soaked in sewage but alive, missile-struck family relies on kindness of strangers

Property surveyors and police mingled with young volunteers and dozens of curious onlookers on a street in Haifa on Monday as dazed residents of buildings gutted by shockwaves from an Iranian missile explosion the night before tried to salvage what remained.

A middle-aged  woman, looking pale and exhausted, emerged with a friend from the three-story building next to which the missile exploded. Both carried bulging shopping bags to a moving van. Looking disoriented, the woman asked nobody in particular for water.

The two had to pass a crowd of ultra-Orthodox men who had gathered to gawp at the destruction in this northern city. A pipe that burst during the explosion was still dripping water onto muddy ground.

Next door, a young student sat on the sidewalk, slumped against the wall of a building that looked eyeless without its windows. Friends loaded suitcases of her belongings and potted plants into a car.

The clanking sounds of bent metal strips from broken window blinds being thrown into a large dumpster mingled with the oddly upbeat jingles of a Chabad bus. Someone on a loudspeaker prayed for the recovery of the seven people injured in the blast, proclaimed that the Iran-backed Hamas terror group in Gaza would be destroyed, and predicted that the People of Israel would be redeemed.

A man from the Finance Ministry’s property tax department, who was assessing the damage from the explosion, said the blast had severely damaged four buildings, although he was receiving calls from many more. He could not say whether the main building that was gutted would need to be demolished.

Scorched cars, mangled metal, and unrecognizable objects either burnt or blown out of people’s homes lined the sidewalks of a street that is home to a mixture of religious and secular Jews.

A 20-minute drive away, Yehudit Rotstein, 38, sat surrounded by her eight children, aged three months to nearly 16, in the lounge of one of two Haifa hotels hosting some of those who lost their homes on Sunday night.

Between rocking the baby, changing her mischievous two-year-old’s diaper, answering the phone, and consoling one of her older boys whose spectacles had fallen out of the hotel room window, she told The Times of Israel that while the building in which she and her husband Ariel had lived for 16 or 17 years had had its foundations strengthened two years previously, their rented apartment was totally destroyed.

Ariel, out at the building with the property tax men, had discovered a miracle, though, she said. On top of the rubble, two sets of tefillin — small leather boxes containing scriptural verses worn as part of morning prayers — had survived intact.

Rotstein said she had a strange premonition on Sunday.

“I put coins in the charity box thinking it could save lives,” she said. “Then, before sundown, I wrote down the words, ‘Tehillim negged tilim’ [Psalms against missiles] and, ‘Tehillim Metzilim‘ [Psalms save].  I told the older children to recite psalms and to stick a star on a piece of paper for every psalm they said.”

She went on, “I had started to put the small children to bed when my husband said there was a missile alert. We took everyone down to the building’s communal bomb shelter, except my 14-year-old, who had gone to pray in the neighborhood. We were 23 people in all.”

“There was a boom, then after that, something crazy that I can’t even explain. The bomb shelter went dark, filling with smoke and dust. Everyone was screaming. My husband and I shouted out psalms. At that point, I thought there was nothing but God. Then we heard explosions outside, one after the other.

“A neighbor took control, called the police and the fire service, and told us not to move. After around half an hour, the emergency services arrived, and someone opened the door and shouted, “Everyone out, now!”

“All the pipes had burst. There was mud and sewage on the floors. I walked through it barefoot, shouting out psalms. There was a big fire. I don’t remember where,” she said, recounting how her 7-year-old child walked through waist-high mud and sewage.

Having left everything at home, Yehudit and the family realized they had nothing with them, not even baby food for little Noa.

A volunteer for the Ihud Hahatazala emergency services invited the family, covered in dust, to his home nearby, where everyone washed, the wife laundered their filthy clothes and provided replacements, diapers, and whatever else she could find, and the children offered the guests their toys and exchanged phone numbers.

“They were like angels,” Rotstein said.

“Noa was hungry and crying,” she went on. “A few men on motorbikes went off in search of baby formula. All the stores were shut. They eventually found some in a gemach,” referring to an Orthodox charitable organization that lends money or items free of charge.

A large taxi arrived to take them to their hotel. On the way, a second missile alert sent them scurrying into a school bomb shelter. The family reached the hotel sometime before 2 a.m. By 4 a.m., the sirens began wailing again, and they had to rush to the hotel’s protected area.

“I haven’t slept,” Rotstein said. “Tehilla [12] and Shmuel [nine] were so shocked they couldn’t drop off. Only the baby has slept well. She was exhausted.”

The Rotsteins were among five families at the Dan Panorama, with a similar number at the Crowne Plaza.

“We’ve lost everything,” said Rotstein, as she got up and herded the children towards their rooms to sleep.

“What now?” she asked. “I have no idea.”