Tomorrow, State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss will publish his special report, written over the year, on the serious flaws in Israel's Fire and Rescue Services, which went uncorrected despite repeated warnings in previous reports.
According to data obtained by "Globes", Lindenstrauss will directly accuse Minister of Interior Eli Yishai and his predecessors, who bear ministerial responsibility for the Fire and Rescue Services, for the flaws. He will also blame Minister of Finance Yuval Steinitz and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak. The report's conclusions will apparently point to the lack of serious regard by their ministries to the flaws in the Fire and Rescue Services.
The report includes a special follow-up to implementation of 2007 report on the functioning of the IDF Homefront Command. That report was written as a result of the Second Lebanon War in 2006, and it warned that the Fire and Rescue Services was the weak link.
The new report states that the serious flaws in the Fire and Rescue Services, including a severe shortage of basic equipment, vehicles, and personnel, which were not corrected. Consequently, the situation deteriorated in the past three years.
In recent months, Lindenstrauss asked the ministries mentioned in the report to respond to his findings. The ministers, beginning with Yishai, told him that they tried in various ways (correspondence, meetings with the prime minister, discussions by the security cabinet, and so on) to deal with the flaws in the Fire and Rescue Services. However, Lindenstrauss' report tomorrow will apparently indicate that he was not persuaded that these efforts were genuine, and in any event, nothing resulted from them.
Publication of the special report, which was due to have been part of the semiannual Comptroller's Report that will be sent to the Knesset in a few weeks, was brought forward after the Carmel fire, which killed scores of people. The Office of the State Comptroller has been working in the past few days to update the report to mention the fire and to state that the writing was on the wall warning against the disaster.
Among other things, the State Comptroller found that, following Operation Cast Lead in Gaza two years ago, and the Turning Point 3 military exercise, the ministers of interior and defense realized the serious consequences of the shortcomings of the Fire and Rescue Services, but nonetheless they did nothing to solve the problem. The inability of the minister of interior to work with the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Defense to deal with the problem is a major fault, tantamount to the abandonment of Israel's civilian population.
The Interior Ministry did not do enough
Likely criticisms:
"The ongoing failure in the serious condition of the Fire and Rescue Services primarily lies at the door of the Ministry of Interior and the minister who head its, as the person with the ministerial responsibility for the Fire and Rescue Services, including its preparedness for emergencies in view of anticipated threats."
According to the upcoming report, in May 2010, Yishai told Lindenstrauss that he wrote to the cabinet secretary a "proposal for decisions" in order to provide a solution for the Fire and Rescue Services. This proposal included a budget supplement of NIS 665 million to recruit firefighters, procure equipment and vehicles, build new firehouses, create an operational branch and firefighting training centers, and other purposes. In practice, despite a discussion about the Fire and Rescue Services between Yishai and Steinitz, nothing was done to improve the firefighting system.
One of the problems that Lindenstrauss warned against in previous reports was that the Fire and Rescue Services had no central command and control system. Tomorrow's report is expected to state that the Ministry of Interior did not prepare a bill to implement cabinet decisions regarding the problem structure of the defense services.
Finance Ministry sabotaged efforts to rebuild the Fire and Rescue Services
Expected criticisms:
Tomorrow's report is expected to state that the Ministry of Finance made budgetary support for the Fire and Rescue Services conditional on the establishment of a national service, in accordance with the cabinet decision on the matter. The report is expected to say that the Ministry of Finance thereby sabotaged the ability to make essential improvements in the preparedness of the Fire and Rescue Services for emergencies, including the recruitment of personnel and the procurement of fire trucks and equipment, a process that takes a long time.
Tomorrow's report will state that, over the past three years, the Ministry of Interior frequently told the Ministry of Finance of the Fire and Rescue Services' overall budgetary needs for both routine and emergency conditions, and in May 2010, when the State Comptroller was working on the report, the Ministry of Interior submitted a budget request to cover immediate shortfalls.
By making the budget conditional on structural reform of the Fire and Rescue Services, all the flaws remained unfixed in all their severity. The report adds that, even after the necessary budget is received from the Ministry of Finance, a long time will pass before the basic improvements are made at the Fire and Rescue Services.
The Defense Ministry failed in its responsibilities
Expected criticisms:
In April 2010, the cabinet placed on Barak "the responsibility for management of the home front in all emergency situations", and a headquarters was even established to help Barak meet this responsibility. Tomorrow's report is expected to state that Barak and the Ministry of Defense played no active role in handling the preparedness of the Fire and Rescue Services, and that neither Barak nor Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acted to promote the matter. They therefore failed in their responsibilities.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 7, 2010
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