Vision to Reality: The Reut Blog

A major earthquake in Israel would lead to the collapse of thousands of buildings. Moreover, between 80 to 90 percent of civilians trapped underneath the rubble would be rescued by the local population (rather than official units from the Home Front Command.) This is due to the difficulty of these units reaching all the different centers of destruction in the early hours of the crisis.

This scenario was recently discussed in a radio interview by Colonel Dr. Chilik Soffer, the head of population and protective kits department at the Home Front Command. In addition, Col. Soffer mentioned that “We need thousands of civilian-volunteers, but we didn’t even start preparing the population to deal with a nation-wide crisis”.

In order to address the above mentioned challenge, the Reut Institute proposes the reorganization of Israeli society into a ‘resilience network’ that would be composed of tens of thousands of units that possess the basic capacities and resources to act independently and in conjunction during crisis. The network would be founded on a culture of preparedness – a collection of values, priorities, patterns of behavior and habits instilled in households, individuals, organizations, businesses and many state institutions.

Bearing in mind the speed and low cost with which this approach can be implemented, organizing society into a ‘resilience network’ might save the life of thousands of people during crises as well as contribute to national and local resilience.