Treatment of victims under rubble following building collapse

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This manuscript was originally written just before the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the US army and its allies in their campaign against the regime of Saddam Hussain. During the Gulf War in 1991 multiple missiles were fired by the Iraq military at Israel, many of which hit Israel's major cities. In the beginning of March 2003 the expectations were that a military offensive by the coalition forces was inevitable. The assumption was that missile fire into Israel would happen again even at a larger scale . Civil search and rescue teams were incorporated into the Home Front Command's national plan. Though members of the civil teams had been trained by the Home Front Command, they requested to receive a document with medical guidelines to guide their medical teams. This manuscript is based on the draft that was quickly written and disseminated between medical personnel of the different search and rescue teams. Starting with the original draft, the manuscript describes the medical approach to victims buried under rubble following an earthquake. The description of an earthquake scenario rather than building collapse following a missile hit was purposely done in order to avoid unnecessary tensions in case the document would reach the general civilian population.

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