Tuesday in Gaza
11 am EET: I couldn’t help but feel panicked. I was using the computer on the 7th/ top floor business lounge when the sirens went off in our hotel. Since rockets obviously fall out of the sky, the top floor of any building is the last place you want to be during a rocket attack. I quickly walked out the door and had no idea where the bomb shelter was. In front of me is a window running the length of the hall that overlooks the inviting deep blue sea. Strike two for me, windows are the worst thing to hide behind in an attack. I cower behind one of the cleaning carts housekeeping uses and a steel elevator door.
I can’t hear the children in the daycare located in the hotel. They’ve gone silent for the first time this morning. Rocket impacts a couple miles away hitting a home. No fatalities or injuries. Family wisely heeded the sirens warning and fled to their bomb shelter.
11:30 am: At the front desk I notice this sign:
Dear Guest,
For your comfort there are shelters on floors 1, 4, 5, 6.
Regards,
Hotel Management
No internet in hotel rooms, but bomb shelters on 4 floors.
1 pm: Producer Ian Rafferty and I go to fill up gas and pick up water and sunflower seeds for the crew. The alarm goes off again. The woman behind the counter pulls my arm and drags me to a closet that’s clearly used for storing. Packages of soda, chips, and bottled water surrounded us. There is so much you can tell about a person’s ego based on how they enter a bomb shelter here.
A man with his son entered the “safe room” lacksadaisically – making a show of himself about how he wasn’t scared and how silly everyone else was who ran into the shelter. Much to the irritation of my producer Ian and the people stuck behind him trying to get in.