Mount Meron: Paramedic who reported disaster recalls how it began

"I was knocked to the ground and I found myself lying next to a 12-year-old boy who was killed. I tried to get up and the crowd was just running me over and I was lying next to him."

By 103FM VIA MAARIV ONLINE

MAY 2, 2021 21:23

Israeli rescue forces and police near the scene of a stampede that killed dozens and wounded dozens over 100 during the celebrations of the Jewish holiday of Lag Baomer on Mt. Meron, in northern Israel on April 30, 2021 (photo credit: DAVID COHEN/FLASH 90) — Israeli rescue forces and police near the scene of a stampede that killed dozens and wounded dozens over 100 during the celebrations of the Jewish holiday of Lag Baomer on Mt. Meron, in northern Israel on April 30, 2021

(photo credit: DAVID COHEN/FLASH 90)

Magen David Adom (MDA) paramedic Omri Gorga made the initial call to report the disaster at Mount Meron, alerting the duty officer. On Sunday morning, he recalled the initial horror.

“The event happened as I got there,” Gorga said. “I was witness from the first moments of the incident.”

Some 45 people were killed between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. Friday morning after a stampede broke out when massive crowds were leaving the Mount Meron Lag Ba’omer bonfire-lighting ceremony.

“Every paramedic needs an aggressive side to manage a complex event,” Gorga told 103 FM. “What you can’t hear in the recording [of the situation report] is the loud music, the mob crushing us when I had to get the message across that there is an abnormal event going on here.

“I am simultaneously breaking it on the MDA internal network and transmitting on the radio and telephone. Meanwhile, as everything is happening, I try to get a clear understanding of the situation. Are we talking about a collapse, a stampede?

“It took me a minute or two to understand from the moment I arrived on the scene... CPR [cardiopulmonary resuscitation] was being done on four people, while I have 20 more unconscious people in the upper section. I saw children having CPR done on them. I got there to help a teammate and was horrified to find he was doing CPR on a 12-year-old.”

When asked how you decide who to treat first in an event with so many casualties, Gorga said it was an incredibly difficult decision.

“Whoever is showing signs of life, we fight for their lives” he said. “If someone is not showing signs of life, we have to invest our efforts in other patients who will survive.”

“In the first moments, I was there, and within minutes, there was an amazing gathering of staff,” Gorga said. “In my wildest dreams I didn’t think that I could gather so much manpower in a matter of seconds in such a crowded place. Thousands of people are running you over, and my team had to fight their way to me. I was lifting a blue glove so they could see me, while being swallowed in the crowd, and they saw my luminous vest and came to me for instructions. I passed the message along that we were talking about an incident with many people injured. We split up the area into sections and started working.”

When asked what his hardest moment was, Gorga said two stood out.

“I was knocked to the ground, and I found myself lying next to a 12-year-old boy who was killed,” he said. “When I tried to get up, the crowd was just running over me, and I was lying next to him.

“The second moment was when I was talking to my friend Maor, a volunteer paramedic. He wanted to do CPR on an unresponsive child, and I told him, ‘I need you to save people that can be saved.’ He told me, ‘It’s a child; I can’t,’ and I told him, ‘Cut [contact]. We have to save people we can save.’”

“It is hard to stop treating children,” he said. “The dilemma is when to let go; when to say I need to save someone else.”

Asked how he was able to separate his emotions from the horrifying scene and act professionally, Gorga said it is difficult, but the whole staff knows how to continue to work and support each other even in such situations.

“MDA knows how to give professional help to those who need it immediately and in the long term,” he said. “This is not the first event, and I believe it won’t be the last. Every bad accident is a disaster as far as we are concerned.”

The psycho-trauma and Crisis Response Unit of United Hatzalah held debriefs and counseling sessions for all of its volunteers and first responders from other organizations who were present at the Meron tragedy.

The group sessions were held in 12 different cities simultaneously and will be continuing throughout the week. The unit consists of trained psychologists and therapists who treat people at the scenes of traumatic medical emergencies and counsel first responders who responded to traumatic emergencies on a regular basis.