Four Palestinians have died in the West Bank as a result of this week's storm. On Wednesday morning Palestinian rescue personnel found two bodies of young Palestinian women who had been missing since Tuesday night, after the car they were riding in was swept away by floods between Nablus and Tul Karm. The car and its driver were found several kilometers away with the driver suffering from hypothermia.
In the Ein Shams refugee camp in Hebron, a 90-year-old woman was killed and her sister seriously injured when a gas heater caused a fire in their home. In Jenin, a man in his 50s was killed when he slipped near his home and sustained head trauma.
Sami Hamadan, head of the rescue services in the Jenin district, reported that more than 90 homes had been flooded and entire families had been made homeless. Palestinian Prime Minster Salam Fayyad said the Palestinian Authority would try to compensate those hit by flood damage. In Gaza 105 people were injured in the flooding, mostly in the city of Rafah, while dozens of homes in other areas were evacuated.
Many Israeli communities that had been flooded on Tuesday only began to understand the scope of the damage on Wednesday, as the water began to recede. On Tuesday night, streets in the town of Bat Hefer resembled Venice, as Nahal Shekhem overflowed its banks, burst through the security barrier and flooded the community, reaching to the second stories of homes in some places. Naval officers and divers made their way through the flooded streets in rubber boats to rescue stranded residents. Some preferred to remain in their homes, while others found refuge in the local community center or with family elsewhere.
On Tuesday morning, residents were shocked to see vehicles strewn all over and trees that had fallen on one another. More than 120 homes were seriously damaged by floodwaters that had flowed through them, destroying everything in the basement and ground floor. Residents are now demanding that the government compensate them as victims of a natural disaster.
Dozens of families in Hadera were forced to spend Tuesday night with relatives after their homes were flooded when Nahal Hadera overflowed and inundated the eastern entrance to the city. The Mix commercial center was totally flooded, and rescue personnel used trucks and rubber boats to extract around 100 people who were trapped in the compound.
Businesses in other areas of the city also suffered serious damage. The southern industrial zone looked as if it had been bombed; cars were stuck in the water, buildings were flooded and hundreds of thousands of shekels worth of goods were scattered all over.
The director-general of the Prime Minister's Office, Harel Locker, is expected to visit the city on Thursday. Many Arab towns and cities complained that their sewerage infrastructure - assuming there was any in the first place - had collapsed, causing major flooding and damage estimated in the hundreds of millions of shekels.
Front Page Features