Firefighters Deploy for 100 km/h Winds and Desert Flash Floods

Israel's fire and rescue system said on 11 January 2026 that it was preparing for stormy weather bringing strong winds, heavy rain and the risk of flooding and inundation. The forecast for Tuesday 13 January predicted winds of up to 100 kilometres per hour, mainly across the coastal plain and the mountains, with a risk of damage including falling trees, and heavy rain and flooding chiefly in the south and east of the country.

In response, the statement said, all districts would be strengthened under the direction of the Fire and Rescue Commissioner for Israel, Eyal Caspi, with teams deployed at risk points around the country. The preparation included reinforcing crews and stations and readying special rescue units, among them running-water rescue units and firefighters trained on specialised equipment for dealing with flood events.

What the storm did

The storm arrived as forecast. A woman was critically injured, apparently by a heavy object, as her home flooded in the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem, and died; several other people were lightly hurt by falling objects and trees, The Times of Israel reported on 13 January. A teenager was swept away by the Nahal Modi'im stream and was missing; a second teenager with him escaped. Rescuers pulled three people from the roof of a car in floodwater at Nahal Anava and a man and a woman from an almost submerged vehicle at Abu Ghosh, one of them treated for hypothermia. Coastal winds reached 100 kilometres per hour, the Naomi Shemer Tunnel was closed by flooding, part of Route 90 was closed and flights from Haifa airport were cancelled.

Why the south floods hardest

The heaviest flood risk sits where the least rain falls. In the Negev and the Arava, baked ground sheds water instead of absorbing it, so rain on high ground can send a surge down a dry streambed far from the storm itself. In December 2025 flooding closed Routes 90, 12 and 40 and effectively cut Eilat off from the rest of the country, with hundreds of cars backed up along Route 90; the desert landscape is especially susceptible to severe weather and flash floods, The Times of Israel noted at the time.

The disaster that changed how warnings are treated

Pre-positioning rescue teams before a forecast storm is a relatively recent reflex, and it has a specific origin. On 26 April 2018 ten teenagers (nine girls and a boy from a pre-military academy) were killed when a flash flood swept through the Tzafit riverbed south of the Dead Sea during a hike taken despite weather warnings. In April 2025 the Beersheba District Court sentenced two educators to seven years in prison for negligent manslaughter and ordered them to pay compensation, The Times of Israel reported.

What the statement did not say

The fire service gave no numbers (not for the extra crews, the vehicles or the specialist units mobilised) and did not identify the risk points where teams were being posted. It did not name the source of the forecast it was working from, or say how long the reinforced posture would be held. Nor did it set out what the public was being asked to do.