Infant twins injured as multiple fires strike Jerusalem
Infant twins injured as multiple fires strike Jerusalem
25 July 2010
published by www.haaretz.com
Israel — Eighteen-month-year old twins were moderately injured from smoke inhalation in Jerusalem, in one of two blazes which ravaged the capital and its surroundings on Sunday.
The first fire broke in an apartment building in Jerusalem’s Shmuel Hanavi street, where the infant twins were injured, with another 3-year-old also hurt.
Magen David Adom paramedic Ze’ev Hefetz said that Jerusalem firefighters extracted twins with soot marks around their nose and mouth,” adding that the infants suffered from smoke inhalation, but not from burns.”
“When we arrived at the scene we saw the mother waiting upstairs,” the MDA paramedic said, adding that the “fire must have erupted while the father was in the apartment along with the three children.”
Hefetz said that the mother “was distraught, telling us her husband and children were inside the apartment. After we evacuated the twins the father and a third child arrived at the hospital with light smoke-inhalation-related injuries.”
The MDA paramedic added that the twins were “fully conscious and were able to breathe independently at the time of their evacuation to Shaare Zedek Medical Center.”
A second, more sizeable, blaze erupted at around 1:30 P.M. in the Aminadav Forest, just outside Jerusalem’s Ein Karem neighborhood. Fire fighters attempting to contain the blaze reported that the flames were closing in on nearby Hadassah University Hospital, where ten cars reportedly caught alight in the hospital parking lot.
Police ordered the residents of nearby Ora and Aminadav to evacuate their homes, fearing the flames would reach their homes as well. Firefighters were being aided by two aerial firefighters, with Jewish National Fund officials estimating that 50 dunams [about 12 acres] of forest have already been incinerated in the blaze.
