Paradise lost

As they return to assess the havoc wreaked on their homes by the Carmel fires, residents of the North are determined to build anew.

By BEN HARTMAN
burnt house_521 (photo credit: Ben Hartman)
burnt house_521
(photo credit: Ben Hartman)
Monday morning’s short-lived rains were quickly called a godsend for the North. For most people, they signaled the long-overdue onset of winter and a sure sign that the Carmel wildfire, which had been ruled all but dead a day before, was on its way to being basically forgotten, with only an inevitable commission of inquiry set to bring it back into the breakneck news cycle.
For the people of the kibbutzim and small towns hardest hit by the inferno, however, the long road to recovery has still not begun, and there is no certainty that they will regain the lives they had before or that one of the country’s most beautiful corners will ever return to its former self.
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By early afternoon on Monday there was hardly a cloud in the sky over the Carmel, and the sun was again beating down on the parched and scorched earth below. In the hills and mountains on both sides of the road from Atlit to Beit Oren, helicopters crawled across the sky, carting buckets of seawater to douse the mounds of embers smoking in dozens of spots throughout the hills. They remained a threat if an unkind wind carried them to the still green patches of the Carmel.
Kibbutz Beit Oren was one of the communities hardest hit by the fire. Around 65 houses suffered damage on the kibbutz, one of the smallest in the country with only around 200 members. The kibbutz lies within view of a bus that went up in flames on Thursday, leaving more than 40 people dead. The kibbutz was forcibly evacuated on Thursday, and those residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed were staying at nearby Kibbutz Nahsholim, waiting for the word that the asbestos and cleanup crews had cleared out and that they could return to the kibbutz.
In the southern neighborhood of Beit Oren, 10 buildings perched on stilts overlooking the Carmel Nature Reserve were completely destroyed, their insides gutted and blackened, with only the outside frames spared by the flames. Throughout the block, the remnants of a life frantically left behind could be seen everywhere: a child’s bicycle frozen in ash on a mound of tile; plastic chairs and lawn furniture still intact on a balcony; a barbecue set sinking into the soot.
The wildfire seemed to have been fickle in its mayhem. Next to the tennis court, whose nets had melted, the entire southern side of one house was burned and its deck a mass of charcoal. Only steps away, the entryway was spotless, an orange tree giving shade looked healthy as ever and a house cat licked its paws on the front porch. Less than 100 meters away, an entire neighborhood was still pristine, and a sprawling vegetable patch looked as green as any garden in Israel.
In the background, a group of Druse from Usfiya were clearing brush with chain saws and bulldozers, the first step in the cleanup on the road to recovery. Outside the last building on the scorched block, three kibbutzniks in their 20s were taking in the damage.
Siblings Ronit, Smadar and Yaron (not their real names) were born and raised on the kibbutz and lived in apartments on the now devastated southern block. Most of the buildings housed kids who had finished the army and came back to the kibbutz to live, with no intention of running off to the big city. The buildings housed five small apartments and created an intimate social life for the tenants.
“We came back after the army because we love it here. It was the most beautiful place on Earth, and we’d never imagine living anywhere else. We’d never even consider living in the city,” Ronit said.
The siblings weren’t at home when the fire broke out, but returned on Saturday and are staying at their parents’ house on the kibbutz, located in a section completely untouched by the fire.
“We’re staying there for now. We still don’t know what the plan is, but we plan to rebuild,” Smadar said.
Ronit added that when they do rebuild, “we’ll make sure to do things differently, to plant trees that are safer and more suitable to the climate. The pine trees are just like torches.”
Beit Oren is located next to the Carmel Nature Reserve in an area often called “Little Switzerland,” largely because of the mountain scenery and the pine trees it was named after. When the fire came to Beit Oren on Thursday, the pine trees betrayed the kibbutz, bursting and exploding into flames, sending fiery pinecones flying in all directions like artillery shells. For many residents, the fact that the damage wasn’t worse seemed almost a miracle.
“WHEN I came to Israel from Eritrea, I didn’t think it would be like this. I pictured only desert, and here it was all just beautiful forests and mountains,” said Desale, walking through the kibbutz on Monday with his girlfriend, Ridat.
Beit Oren is the only home the 27-year-old has known since he arrived in the country from Sudan two years and eight months ago.
Called Moshe by his friends at Beit Oren, Desale lives at the kibbutz hotel, where he works as a handyman, gardener, housekeeper – “everything really.” The hotel is only a few meters from the row of houses destroyed by the flames, but was somehow spared.
Last Thursday, Desale and friends saw the fires on an adjacent hilltop about a kilometer away but, he said, “we just thought some trash was burning, that it was nothing serious. Then within an hour and a half it was all the way here, and the police were running around telling us to leave.”
Desale fled to Tel Aviv, where he stayed with friends, before returning on Sunday.
When asked if he enjoyed living in such a scenic environment, Desale beamed, saying, “Of course. I had a friend here with an ATV, and we’d go riding on the mountains all the time. We loved it out there.”
Even with the hilltops charred and the future of the kibbutz in question, Desale said he and his fellow kibbutzniks had no intention on leaving.
“This has been my home since I came to Israel, and these people have been my family. They have taken care of me and helped me with my visa – everything I’ve ever needed. We aren’t going anywhere. People are going to stay and rebuild everything, and I will do whatever I can to help them.”
People filed in and out of Beit Oren’s office on Monday, mainly journalists and residents whose houses were unscathed.
Kibbutz member Guy Ben-Yehuda made coffee and joked with worried residents, one of whom had just returned and hadn’t yet seen her home. “I was just there. Let me tell you, I swear, the house is fine, just some soot is all.”
Ben-Yehuda said that several dozen apartments burned in around 15 buildings, but all residents of the kibbutz had found a place to stay and no one was left without a roof over his head. He added that the kibbutz school was spared and that the local kids haven’t missed any classes.
The kibbutz runs a horseback riding ring and trail rides, which are popular with tourists and locals. After the fires died down Sunday, residents breathed a sigh of relief when they found out that all of the more than 100 horses were safe and sound.
“The thing is, we aren’t letting the residents whose houses were burned come up here yet. They’re staying in Nahsholim until we can clean all the asbestos and soot out of the houses. When they see their houses, they’ll be shocked. That’s when the real trauma will begin,” said Ben-Yehuda.
SOUTHWEST OF Beit Oren lies the Yemin Orde youth village, which on Monday was a shell of its former self, with nearly a dozen buildings destroyed.
Yemin Orde is a boarding school that is home to more than 500 youths from around the world and their Israeli counselors, many of whom are post-army or are performing National Service. Though most of the youths are students from families here and abroad, the village also houses a large number of orphans between the ages of nine to 19 from the former Soviet Union.
On Monday, current and former students and teachers walked through the village, taking in the devastation. The gutted buildings included student dormitories, houses of counselors, a convenience store, library and workshop. The workshop was a familiar spot for former student Moshe Kaufmann, 23, who drove up from Herzliya to survey the damage.
“I used to work here. All the students are given a job, and my job was here in the workshop. I knew this place very well,” the crestfallen Sao Paulo native said, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the Brazilian flag.
“I spent the best three years of my life here. I’ve been all over Israel, and there’s nowhere as beautiful as this place,” Kaufmann said, relating stories of field trips, early morning services in the synagogue and hiding between the pine trees with his girlfriend, breaking curfew and keeping an eye out for the flashlight of the village guard.
“I’m not going to say this place was perfect; we had some problems. But every kid who had the chance to live here was lucky. If I could live here again, I’d do it in a heartbeat,” Kaufmann said, taking in the view toward the turquoise waters off the navy base in Atlit.
“You have no idea what it was like to get up in the morning and sit here drinking coffee and looking at this view. Most of the kids stayed in their group, but I had a lot of Ethiopian friends, and Israelis too. A lot of the Ethiopians I stayed in touch with. One of them I even served in the army with,” Kaufmann said as he passed a severely burned bamboo memorial to Ethiopian Jews who died making their way to the country.
Farther down the path, the door of a fire-damaged recreation hall showed a sticker that read “end-of-year party” set for next week.
“This place I really loved,” said Kaufmann, walking into the shattered and ashen doors of the library. Inside, the ceiling had collapsed and dust and ash covered every inch of open space. Somehow, the Hebrew, Russian and English books survived the flames.
The exterior walls of the synagogue showed signs of the fire, but the inside bore no sign that a wildfire had raged outside its doors.
“I guess there’s something watching over it from above,” Kaufmann said.
Following the destruction, Yemin Orde launched a donation drive, asking the public to send anything they could to help it recover. The drive places a particular emphasis on the orphans who lost their homes and are in need of clothes, furniture, school supplies and home appliances.
“PEOPLE HAVE nothing left. They’re artists. Some of them are doing pretty well, but they’ve lost their homes, studios, and they still have to pay their mortgages,” said Ronen (not his real name), who works in a sculptor and painter’s studio in an olive grove on the outskirts of the artists’ village of Ein Hod, next to Yemin Orde.
He described how he and others stayed at the studio as the fires closed in, fighting the flames with hoses until the police ordered them to leave. They fled through a banana field to high ground before leaving entirely.
All around, Ronen said, the world seemed surrounded by flames dozens of meters high.
The whole time he was holed up at the studio, his cellphone battery was dead and he had no electricity to charge it, leaving relatives and friends in a panic trying to reach him.
“People want to rebuild, but they can’t do it on their own. They have kids, mortgages, all types of expenses, and a lot of them didn’t have insurance.
People are in a very serious situation here, and they need help.”
Ronen also spoke of the cruel fate suffered by Ziva Keiner, a painter whose husband died only three days before the start of the fire. She was forced to flee the shiva as the fires closed in on Friday. After she left, her house was completely destroyed, though her studio was spared.
Ronen, a native of Brazil who has lived in Israel off and on for several years, added that even though the situation for many people in Ein Hod is now very difficult, he has no intention of leaving.
“This is the only place in Israel I’ve ever lived. People tell me to come stay with them in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, here, there, but I can’t. I love this place. I’d never leave.”