'Angels in Orange' - Volunteers Saving Lives

Many heroes from October seventh and the ongoing war are emergency aid workers. One group is called 'Angels in Orange' – United Hatzalah volunteers, who aim to arrive and provide medical aid within 90 seconds in an emergency situation.

The name means 'United Rescue' – and volunteers jump into action the minute they're needed. That's exactly what happened on that fateful day more than a year ago. 

“October 7th was supposed to be a very special day for me and my family. It was supposed to be my son's bar mitzvah. And we were the whole family together by my parents, all excited, ready to go to synagogue in the morning for the celebration,” said Dovie Maisel, Vice President of Operations and International Spokesman for United Hatzalah. 

But at 6:29 AM, missiles started flying, alarms sounded and when they didn't stop, Maisel knew there was trouble.

“And we're getting more calls of missiles over here and shootings over here. And I'm talking to my deputy and telling him immediately, this is 6:30, ‘Get immediately to headquarters.’ He lives only 15 minutes away from here. So, he immediately deploys to headquarters. And I got my whole operational staff all on the way,” Maisel told CBN News.

One of the pieces of equipment that marks United Hatzalah is the orange ambucycle – a motorcycle that’s fully equipped for first responders. United Hatzalah has more than a thousand of them countrywide. On October 7th the volunteers that ride them sprang into action to save lives.

“Being a community-based emergency response organization (that) bases its whole operation method on the community response, and suddenly we have hundreds of these volunteers from Sderot, Netivot, Ofakim responding in their communities to massive incidents of shooting attacks and explosions and grenades and like, it literally felt like the apocalypse,” Maisel said, describing the scene on that day.

United Hatzalah headquarters and control room are in Jerusalem and that’s where they received the calls for help on October 7th. As more reports of terrorist infiltrations came in Maisel said they had to quickly decide whether to deploy volunteers and ambulances from other areas of the country to the south.

“So ground rule of emergency medical services is safety first always. You never go into the hot zone. Never go into harm's way. You wait until security forces clear the area, secure it, make sure that there's no threat to the volunteers responding,” Maisel explained.

They understood early this would be a very different situation than usual.

“I made the hardest decision of my life then and said, ‘we're all going in under fire.’ We're not going to force anyone. We knew where the parameters of the hot zone (are). And we told the volunteers going down there, ‘you get to this parameter. We have our staging area. You do not have to go in,’” Maisel said of that day. 

Some were wounded like Rabbi Sassi, a volunteer from Sderot, who responded to a missile attack on the police station, that was overrun by terrorists.

So we told the volunteers within the region there, respond in your neighborhood because you're in it anyway. Obviously put on your protective gear, your bulletproof vest, your helmet, preferably if you have a weapon or you know, and connect on the field to the policemen and law enforcement,” Maisel explained.

Later, Rabbi Sassi received a special three-wheel ambucycle so he can continue to volunteer.

More than 1,000 volunteers took part in the 36-hour mission that began on October 7th, saving more than 1,000 lives.

“I have no way to explain it, you know, in a natural way, having hundreds of people go in under direct fire of terrorists, missiles, exploding grenades, shrapnel. We have dozens of volunteers, cars that were full of bullet holes and ambulances with shrapnel and tires torn, and but no one killed,” Maisel said.

Maisel credits divine protection.

“Thankfully – and I have goosebumps – thankfully, there were angels (that) came down from the heavens on that day and protected hundreds of volunteers (who) went in under fire, and we have endless footage here of battles with terrorists and yet none of them were killed. They all returned safely,” he said.

Maisel says Israeli nonprofits and volunteer groups really came together to save lives then and they're now preparing for other battles.

“Moving forward, especially what we know (about) the threat coming in from the North, or not even only the North, but they call it the fire ring of Iran and its proxies. We understand that if we won't prepare ourselves, we'll never be ready,” he said.

They've stocked up on motorcycles, emergency vehicles and other equipment such as generators, backup and satellite communications.

“We want to think how we can utilize and leverage this power of community, of the amazing volunteerism spirit of Israeli society. And it resonates with the name of our organization. United Hatzalah means rescue. What (is) uniting the cross-section of Israeli society? Men, women, Jews, Arabs, Orthodox, secular, all this is (with) one mission of saving lives in the community,” Maisel said.

Maisel believes Jews, Arabs and Muslims are able to unite in these challenging times because those who volunteer to save lives are a different breed.

“I always say our mission is saving lives. But our byproduct of this organization is building bridges in the community here. And it gives a lot of hope, actually, especially in times like these.”

Maisel thinks this is the toughest year Israel as a state has ever had. And it's probably going to get worse before it gets better. 

“But there's a strong sense of optimism because, you know, being around as a nation for thousands of years, we're not really worried about the short term. We need to live it out. We need to add more light in doing good and we'll prevail here,” he added.