If your house was on fire, what would you grab first on your escape from the burning flames?
I remember these kinds of questions as part of various “getting to know each other” scenarios, with friends or in workshops and I always think – first the kids and pets, then my phone, computer, photo albums maybe?
You start thinking about what are the truly irreplaceable things in your life.
Today, I can honestly say that after experiencing a 3am wake-up from a siren, announcing an impending rocket attack on our area, the irreplaceable things are furthest from your mind. Thankfully, in our region we get 2 minutes to make it down to our bomb shelter. In other parts of the country, they get 15 seconds.
At 3am, with 2 minutes to get to safety, and 2 teenagers at home in bed, my husband and I rushed to wake them up, battling our own sleepy daze – not so easy because we’re talking about teenagers here. One parent per child, we didn’t want to frighten them but rather to wake them sufficiently so that they know they need to be up and awake enough to get downstairs to our bomb shelter. That took a good 60 seconds. In fact, I thought I had one following right behind me on the stairs only to realise a bit later that she didn’t quite make it out of bed so I ran back to her room and again, urged her to wake up and come down.
We made it to the bomb shelter and then realised we don’t have enough chairs for everyone to sit in there so 20 more seconds to bring in some chairs so we can sit comfortably while we wait for safety. I’d say we were in and closed tightly with 10 seconds to spare.
And only then did we start thinking about what we need – water, mobile phones, computer? None of these items were on our minds at all. When you’re running for safety, you grab your people and go.
The second time, we were more prepared. We put some water and snacks in advance, chairs in place, woke our children (and grabbed our phones) and so we were better equipped for the stay.