The Defense Ministry’s National Emergency Administration failed to prepare
together with the IDF the defense establishment’s response to national disasters
such as the Mount Carmel fire, State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss wrote in
his damning report released on Wednesday.
In the report, Lindenstrauss
said that the NEA needed to prepare ahead of time a list of potential national
disasters and to work together with the IDF to create various responses and
solutions. The NEA was established after the 2006 Second Lebanon War to
coordinate between the various emergency services in the event of large-scale
missile attacks or national disasters.
Lindenstrauss said that the 2010
fire demonstrated the lack of coordination between the military and the Israel
Police in home front crisis management.
“The IDF and the police did not
hold regular joint assessments of the situation during the fire,” Lindenstrauss
wrote in the report.
“This was needed in order to properly manage the
emergency efforts and in order to see if the police was capable of managing the
event or needed to transfer responsibility to the IDF.”
The report said
that it was imperative that all of the emergency services create a
communications system that would enable them to talk to another during
emergencies.
Lindenstrauss repeated a recommendation he made after the
Second Lebanon War that the government establish a single body that is
responsible for all emergency efforts on the home front, unlike the situation
today under which the IDF is responsible for its Home Front Command and the
Public Security Ministry is responsible for the Israel Police.