Not even a week had passed since the 12-day war with Iran ended and Jerusalemites could get back to a sense of safety and calm.
Unlike the past two rounds of missile fire from the Islamic Republic, which were over relatively briefly, this time saw multiple volleys on a daily basis, wreaking heavy damage throughout the country. Jerusalemites, naturally, were afraid – and I was one of them.
Like many Jerusalemites who live in older buildings, my spouse, two cats, and I do not have a bomb shelter or safe room in our apartment or building. The nearest public safe room is a few blocks away, and for someone disabled like myself, it’s impossible to make it there in time.
We spent the 12 days of the war, and an extra couple of days to be safe, at my grandmother’s apartment in Kiryat Yovel. While it was amusing to see my grandmother interact with my cats and frustrating when one of them escaped and ran all the way to the bottom of the 17+ storey building, as we had to search each floor on foot for him, the important thing is that we were safe there, having a secure bomb shelter to hide out in when our Home Front Command apps went off in the middle of the night.
It also meant working remotely. While The Jerusalem Post office does have a safe room that most can access within a reasonable time frame, it is not readily accessible for people with disabilities like me, as it is a few floors downstairs.
We were relieved to finally go home and be in our own space again. This home, where we have fostered so much love and joy over the course of our marriage, while lacking a safe room, was still the place I felt the safest emotionally.
So when on Tuesday night I heard that familiar Home Front Command app notification once again, my spouse and I didn’t have a bomb shelter to go to. We had to instead make it to the public safe room several blocks away.
We weren’t fast enough. We were barely halfway there when the sirens got louder, signaling – as we later found out – a missile fired by the Houthis in Yemen. We only had a minute and a half to make it there, and we were at least three minutes away.
But when we finally got there, we found out that rushing there didn’t matter. The public safe room was sealed shut by a padlock.
A decidedly unsafe safe room, I quipped to myself sarcastically, angrily wondering what the point was of a safe room no one could access.
A lack of accessible public safe rooms in Jerusalem
I wasn’t alone in this situation. The fact is that thousands of Jerusalemites don’t have access to a public safe room. Many neighborhoods, especially in east Jerusalem, don’t even have access to any official public safe rooms, barring those that are converted from parking garages and schools.
And the situation is even worse for those who are disabled, as many public safe rooms require going down flights of stairs. There is no real solution for any Israelis with disabilities if there are no accessible safe rooms nearby. Getting an apartment with a bomb shelter or safe room nearby can be expensive, especially since the war started, and new apartments can be even pricier. So it isn’t impossible to be priced out of being safe, especially when taking accessibility into account.
Many Jerusalemites struggled with not being able to reach a safe room. One of them, speaking to In Jerusalem, was Candice Nemoff, who was out with her fiancé when they got the alert. “We were at Pitmaster in Cinema City when we got the alert,” she said. “They told us to go downstairs when the siren went off, so we went out into the staircase. But half the people just stopped in the staircase, so we couldn’t even go down further.
“And so we went back up, and half the people in the restaurant were still there, and the waiters were still working. I don’t even know if the staircase was safe or if we had to make it all the way to the bottom. They didn’t specify.”
Regarding my own experience, after the ordeal was over, I contacted the Jerusalem Municipality to ask why the public safe room near me was closed. The explanation was rather vague, but it seemed to boil down to nobody asking them to open it, though they would do so now that I called.
When I asked why someone had to ask to open it, since surely nobody would think to ask until after a siren already went off, they weren’t able to satisfactorily answer and hung up.
As I write this, my spouse and I are considering whether we need to go back to my grandmother’s apartment to seek shelter. I know it isn’t feasible for me to keep trying to run in vain to a safe room that will just end up being locked. So what choice do I have? Is there a price on safety?
Many Jerusalemites, as well as people all over Israel, don’t have access to safety in cases of a missile attack, and not enough is being done about it – or at the very least, not fast enough. The fact that a public safe room can be locked shut when people need it and only opened after the situation has passed just goes to show how backwards this system can be.
Something needs to be done about this, and soon. The gears of change move slowly, and missiles move fast.