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December 31, 2010
Optimism in Yemin Orde
Rebuilding starts, as residents return to fire-affected village.
ARIEH O’SULLIVAN THE MEDIA LINE
The first thing they did was run to the sports field to get a good look. The view was shocking. The surrounding Carmel Mountain forest, which had encircled and shaded the Yemin Orde Youth Village, was gone. Just soot and burned trunks remained.
A week after the devastating forest fire raged through the village in the worst natural disaster in Israel’s history, the students were returning. They were this year’s senior class and vanguard of this 57-year-old institution, and they had come first to start picking up the pieces.
Hugging the students as they arrived was Assi Tamayet, an Ethiopian-born teacher, who lived in the village and had stayed behind to try and fight the fire, but in vain. His home, as well as two dozen houses, classrooms, the library and dormitories went up in flames.
“We saw the fire ball approaching and they came and took us out of here. I knew deep inside then that this place was going to burn down,” said Tamayet, a father of five. “All my house was burned down to the foundation. Nothing was left. Everything was lost, all the memories, our possessions. Only the walls remain, no roof or anything else.”
The Carmel Mountain forest fire is one of Israel’s greatest natural disasters. The fire raged for days, displacing thousands of people, destroying more than five million trees and killing 44 people, most of them prison guards trapped on a bus.
The flames showed no mercy. They overran a communal village, an artist colony and the Yemin Orde Youth Village nestled atop Mount Carmel. The 500 children, mostly from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union, were evacuated as the staff tried to fight the flames.
“We had some fires before, but it wasn’t as devastating as this time,” said Chaim Peri, director emeritus of Yemin Orde. “Fortunately, we were saved and there were no human sacrifices.”
Peri, who has been involved in the youth village for more than three decades, said his biggest fear had been that the residents, who had experienced abandonment in their native lands, would suffer again.
“What I was most fearing was that all of these kids from orphanages in eastern Europe, who have been abandoned once and now see their homes in ruins, what is going to happen to all the processes and all the love and all the trust that we have instilled in them? And to my amazement, I see these kids going through the ruins and act[ing] as if it is a scavenger hunt because they realize it’s not the walls, it’s the people, the connection. It’s the love and for whatever it is this place stands,” Peri said.
Yemin Orde Youth Village was built in 1953 to provide a haven for Jewish youth, many Holocaust orphans, who were uprooted and left to their fate. It became an incubator for leadership among immigrants in Israel. Graduates include the first Ethiopian-born lawyer in Israel, senior army officers, a former commander of the Border Police and many directors of nongovernmental organizations and community leaders. Today, the residents come from 20 different countries, as well as Israeli-born children from dysfunctional homes.
Just a week after fire fighters, aided by international teams, finally extinguished the flames, the students returned to see firsthand what happened to their home. Before setting out to survey the damage, they gathered in circles in undamaged classrooms, where trauma counselors worked with them to discuss the tragedy.
“This is the first time they’re seeing the destruction before their very eyes and not from a TV screen,” Tamayet said. “They are, first of all, looking, just looking. What was burned and what wasn’t. Some can’t recognize places and they know that their village has changed, but they so much wanted to come back because this is their home.”
A few days after the fire, a heavy rainstorm was unleashed on the smoldering hills and village, giving the area a stench of burned wood mixed with mud and rain. The place, however, was abuzz with tractors and saws, and dozens of graduates have come to lend a hand in the cleanup.
Among the destroyed structures was a godjo, or Ethiopian shrine, in the shape of a hut, where students marked the rigorous journey Ethiopians made to get to Israel. All that remained was the twisted iron frame and Star of David crest.
“In a quite brutal way, we paid a hell of a price to get the limelight of the nation on this place and what it stands for,” said Peri. “Now, we are showered with love from all of Israel. People come and people give their help. There are so many volunteers around here, shoulder to shoulder with our graduates, building it up. It is a metaphor that decay is not the final decree; that out of all this, something great comes out. It really is a metaphor about the Jewish people. You get up from ashes and you rebuild yourself and you see hope and hopefully you become really a light onto the nations, because that is what we are supposed to be.”
Although the fire destroyed more than 40 percent of Yemin Orde, Tamayet, like most of the other teachers and staff, remained upbeat.
“I have a very good feeling about today. I am returning home, even if it is burned up. [You have a] sense that you are starting to rebuild the place, your home and to regenerate what was burned. It’s a good feeling for us and for the students that we are returning to the routine. It’s a little hard but we’ll cope and [move] onward,” he said.
In time, even Mother Nature has a way of regenerating herself. Officials from the Jewish National Fund, which plants forests in Israel, explained that the pine cones would eventually release their seedlings and forest again would cover the Carmel Mountains and Yemin Orde.
“Nature will regenerate itself,” said Kalil Adar, director of JNF’s northern region forestry department. “The pines, our cedars and the new ... seedlings will come. The oak and pistachio are sprouters too, so they will sprout later on. In two years you will see green cover, not the same trees the same height, but you will see nature coming."
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