A woman and her baby son were seriously injured Wednesday evening in an apartment fire in Be'er Sheva. The two suffered serious cases of smoke inhalation.
Magen David Adom (MDA) medics and paramedics treated them as well as three other people who were moderately and lightly injured in the blaze and evacuated them to Soroka Hospital in the city.
Senior MDA Paramedic Adir Bitan said: "This was a fire on the second floor of a four-story building. The fire brigade rescued from several apartments in the building the victims who inhaled smoke and brought them to us, and we immediately received them in intensive care vehicles and in ambulances that were deployed with all the appropriate medical equipment to the street."
"At the scene we found two victims, a woman about 30-years-old and a toddler about one and a half-years-old were in serious condition, a woman about 50 years old was moderately injured and 2 other victims were in light condition. We gave all the victims medical treatment with oxygen and evacuated them to the hospital while the woman who was seriously injured was sedated and on assisted breathing and the other victims were conscious," he added.
Firefighting and rescue teams from the Be'er Sheva station who arrived at the scene identified the fire on the second floor and realized that several family members were trapped inside. The firefighters immediately divided into two teams, one of which fought to extinguish the fire while the other entered the building to search for people trapped inside.
The firefighter in charge of the incident, Eli Shokron, stated that "this is a very serious incident where we located at the scene of the fire a number of trapped people, including a one and a half-year-old baby who inhaled smoke and a number of other trapped people who were trapped in an apartment surrounded by smoke and flames which endangered their lives. The firefighters worked with determination and speed to rescue them until the fire was brought under control. At this stage, after the rescue of all the trapped people, we are carrying out the final extinguishing and smoke ventilation of the building."