Herald News (Passaic County, NJ)
BERGEN COUNTY, N.J. —Israeli firefighters who trained at the Bergen County Law and Public Safety Institute in Mahwah are battling wildfires in their homeland this week that have killed at least 41 people and forced hundreds of families from their homes.
Eleven firefighters trained at the institute in September 2009 under a program sponsored by the UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey and its Partnership 2000 initiative. Working with Bergen firefighters, they formed close ties.
Those Bergen firefighters are now tracking their Israeli friends in Nahariya and its environs through texting, e-mail and social media.
One of those firefighters, Yigal Ben Abu, the chief of special operations, has been communicating with his wife, Tania, as he battles the fires.
“He came home and left again,” Tania Ben Abu wrote in a Facebook message that reached Bergen firefighters and Miriam Allenson, the director of marketing services for the UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey. “He hasn’t slept for the last 30 hours. Everyone’s exhausted.”
Pinny Hecht, 27, a Cresskill and Tenafly firefighter, is a close friend of the Ben Abus and has been keeping in touch since the fires started this week. He is confident in the abilities of the Israeli firefighters.
“It’s still pretty heavily engaged there,” said Hecht, who visited the Ben Abu family in Israel in July and October. “They do so much with many less firefighters. I know what it’s like since I’ve been there. We don’t have a lot of forest fires here. It’s hot, grueling, dirty work.”
Hecht rode with the Israeli firefighting team in October, responding to a brush fire that was a “decent size,” he said.
“It was nothing like this, but it took us two to three hours with six firefighters” to extinguish, he said. “Here, we get additional manpower and ... apparatus to supply the water quickly, but there, your nearest firehouse to assist could be 30 minutes away. It was a half-hour ride for us to get to the fire.”
Yigal Ben Abu spoke last year of Israel having 7 million people and only 1,400 firefighters. He said the country needed more firefighters -- adding that Bergen County’s more than 4,000 would be ideal.
“We trained them in building fires when they were here, not forest fires, but what they don’t have is a water supply like we have,” said Larry Rausch, the chief fire instructor at the institute and the Upper Saddle River fire chief. “They may only have 3-inch water lines, while here ... it’s 18-inch water mains or more.”
Allenson received an e-mail from Tania Ben Abu that described the terrain.
“Very high winds and still very hot weather,” she wrote, describing what her husband faced.
Mahwah Fire Chief Tim Malone said simulating fires is one thing, but fighting a fire that size in Israel is quite a daunting task.
“In terms of the elements outside that they are facing, the winds, heat, fire jumping, it can’t fully be replicated at a fire training facility,” Malone said. “You have to experience it to learn how to deal with it. You can take people and put them in the woods, march them up and down on trails, but nine out of 10 times, when you’re fighting this type of fire, you’re making you’re own trails. I can just imagine what they are going through.”
The Israeli teams have a great thing going for them, Malone said.
“They’re all military trained,” he said. “That is helping them. ... They’re in shape. They know how to deal with situations.”
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