Beersheba mother saves her children as rocket destroys house

'I no longer have a home’

OCTOBER 17, 2018 22:36

The damaged house in Beersheba from the rocket attack on Wednesday, October 17, 2018. (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM) — The damaged house in Beersheba from the rocket attack on Wednesday, October 17, 2018.

(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)

Miri Tamano woke up her three children and pulled them into a safe room just seconds before a Grad rocket fell through the roof of her Beersheba home and landed in one of the second story bedrooms.

The story, which astounded her neighborhood, was made more remarkable by the fact that she was sound asleep when the warning sirens rang out at 3:43 a.m., to alert residents of the possibility of an incoming Gaza-launched rocket.

“I heard the alarm,” she told the media. “I thought it was dream. When I came to my senses, I hurried to take the children to the security room. I was trembling and I was afraid.”

Her sister Ora said that Tamano was sleeping on the first floor, ran up the stairs, and woke her three sons, ages eight, 10 and 12, who all slept in different rooms.

“Two of them didn’t want to wake up and she had to drag them out of bed,” Ora said.

The two-story home, located on a small cul-de-sac off a main road, was completely destroyed.

“I no longer have a home,” she said. “The memories are gone. Inside the house, the closets were stuffed with all kinds of things – and now there’s nothing left.”

Throughout the day, reporters, cameramen and neighbors gathered outside her home, long after she had relocated to a nearby hotel.

Little was left of the red tile roof or some of the walls. A blue bed could be seen above the rubble on the second floor, under the hole the rocket made when it struck the structure. At times the wind blew sands into the eyes and mouths of the bystanders.

A mother of five who lives nearby, Nurit Bar-Khanin, almost burst into tears as she surveyed the destruction, which easily could have befallen her home.

“This was luck,” she said. “An alert mother did what she needed to do and saved her family.” Bringing her family to safety was particularly difficult, Bar-Khanin said, because her oldest son, age 29, is physically disabled and cannot walk. Her husband had to lift him out of bed and carry him to the safe room.

“Just after 3:30 we heard the alarm,” she said. “We got all the children into the safe room and then we heard a serious ‘boom.’ The whole house shook.”

Each time there is an alarm in the city, her family runs to the safe room, Bar-Khanin said.

“We live with fear all the time,” she said. “But at the same time, we cannot stop our lives.”