ZAKA’s delegation was one the first search and rescue team to arrive in Haiti: they disembarked just 24 hours after the earthquake. After assessing the situation with the local emergency forces, the team immediately set to work.

The Results:

• ZAKA pulled eight students alive from the rubble of a university, just 38 hours after the building collapsed.
• ZAKA helped recover numerous bodies from the ruins, including missing Canadian Jewish businessman Alexander (Shmuel) Bitton after a month-long search.
• {should add one more hard-number achievement to this list}.

The team described their “Shabbat from hell” in a disturbing email that says it all: “The stench of thousands of bodies is everywhere. You have to understand that the situation is true madness. With every passing minute, there are more and more bodies, in numbers that cannot be grasped. It is beyond comprehension.”

ZAKA volunteers worked tirelessly alongside international emergency forces:

• Ongoing search, rescue and recovery
• Forensic identification
• Skilled medical assistance at the IDF emergency field hospital

ZAKA volunteers responded to the Nepal earthquake and brought specialized knowledge and expertise to the remote areas.

ZAKA set up some of the first mobile emergency medical clinics in remote, difficult-to-reach locations. Carrying much-needed medical supplies, emergency rescue and recovery equipment
and humanitarian aid, the ZAKA paramedic volunteers drove through previously impassable roads to reach mountain villages, where residents thought they had been abandoned to a cruel
fate.

Among others, the ZAKA team rescued stranded travellers taking shelter in a remote monastery and ensured their safe return home. Tragically, after a long and complex operation in difficult
terrain, the ZAKA volunteers, together with family members and friends, succeeded in locating and recovering the body of a missing hiker.

The ZAKA Guatemala unit was established in February 2018, when 45 volunteers from the local Jewish community and representatives from the local emergency services underwent intensive ZAKA search and rescue training. It was just four months later that they put that training to the test, when the Fuego volcano devastated the area.

ZAKA volunteers were on the scene immediately, helping to save lives, rescue trapped survivors and recover victims – even before the international airport re-opened and emergency forces arrived from overseas. Thanks to the timely ZAKA training, hundreds of lives were saved and the community was empowered to manage the crisis for itself, while working in close cooperation with the emergency forces.

In August 2018, the ZAKA volunteers helped raise money and construct a new 100-home neighborhood for volcano survivors, which was called Jerusalem in recognition of the ZAKA team contribution to the community in times of crisis.

ZAKA Search and Rescue Commander in Pittsburgh Rabbi Elisar Admon remained at the scene of America’s deadliest anti-Semitic attack throughout the night. With patience and sensitivity, he briefed the FBI and emergency forces on Jewish burial laws, explaining the many issues that relate to honoring the dead despite the confines of an FBI crime scene.

Thanks to the close cooperation between ZAKA and the FBI, Admon was allowed to enter the site together with the local rabbi to make initial preparations and identifications and ensure the removal of the bodies for burial in accordance with Jewish law. Such was the level of cooperation and religious sensitivity displayed by the FBI as a result of the mutual confidence and trust that Rabbi Admon and his team of ZAKA volunteers were allowed to access the site on a room by room basis to clean the area of all bodily remains and spilled blood for burial.

In today’s world, where natural and manmade disasters often overwhelm local emergency forces by their inordinate scope, communities deserve to receive the right training and tools
necessary to save lives. The importance of local teams rescuing survivors in their own region is essential, and this is precisely the solution that ZAKA Search and Rescue offers to communities throughout the United States and around the globe.

Emergency forces are essential—but no one can save lives like the locals.

This was the lesson learned from the Haiti 2010 earthquake, when it became clear that it was the locals who’d succeeded in saving the most lives in those critical first days.

And this is why ZAKA developed its 5-day Light Search and Rescue training course.

In today’s world, where massive disasters—natural and manmade—often overwhelm local emergency forces, communities deserve to be empowered. They deserve to get the training and tools they need to rescue survivors until emergency forces arrive. This is why ZAKA offers a 5-day Light Search and Rescue Training to communities across the globe.

The training, which was recognized in 2016 by INSARAG, includes:

• Certification as emergency medical first responders
• Security preparedness and response
• Dealing with mass casualty incidents
• Honoring the dead
• Working with forensics
• Simulation emergency drills