pikud-haoref-safety-protocols

Pikud HaOref Safety Protocols

Step-by-step safety instructions for every type of Home Front Command alert in Israel.

Alert Types and Response Protocols

Category 1: Missiles and Rockets (ירי רקטות וטילים)

The most common alert type. Triggered by incoming rocket or missile fire.

Immediate actions (within your time-to-shelter window):

1. Enter the best protected space you can reach in your time window, in this official priority order: mamad (apartment protected space), mamak (floor protected space), mamam (institutional protected space, e.g. a school or municipal facility), then a miklat or public shelter
2. Close the blast door and window shutter completely
3. Sit on the floor against an inner wall, below window height
4. Cover your head with your hands
5. If you have children, hold them close and cover their heads

If there is no protected space near you, or the public shelters are not open. Only then choose "a good place in the middle", which official guidance defines precisely. Do not improvise this.

• Internal stairwell, with no windows and no external walls. Stay on the flight of stairs itself, not on the floor landing.
  • Building of more than three floors: use a flight that has at least two floors above it.
  • Building of fewer than three floors: use the flight of the middle floor.
  • Never the entrance floor.
• Internal space in the building: the one surrounded by the most walls with the fewest windows and openings. Sit against an internal wall, below the window line, and not facing the door.
• Never use the kitchen, the shower or the toilet as your protected space: they are full of ceramics, porcelain and glass that shatter.

Closing a mamad, mamak, mamam or miklat properly: turn the handle 90 degrees to seal the door, and make sure both the outer steel window and the inner glass window are shut, so blast cannot enter. If a double-leaf glass window is fitted, remove the leaves in advance and store them outside the room.