Israel’s Home Front Command, the IDF’s civil defense command, will conduct air-raid siren tests across Israel on Wednesday, November 3rd. Split into several warning areas, the alerts will be active from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM and 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM.
Alarms and warnings will be broadcast in several northern regions of Israel, such as in Acre, Masada, Kiryat Ata and Kiryat Bialik, from 10:00 in the morning until 11:00 AM. Central and southern regions such as Jerusalem, Ashkelon North, Ramat Gan, Rishon Lezion and Herzliya will conduct their drill from 6:00 PM to 7:00 in the evening.
The alerts will be broadcast on all platforms: sirens, the Home Front Command widget, the national emergency portal, and various other news and social media.
Residents of the districts participating in the drill will be expected to react rapidly to the sirens and reach a designated safe area within a safe time frame.
The length of the security exercises of specific locales varies on the amount of time it takes residents to evacuate in the event of a missile warning. For example, Tel Katzir and Masada have a 30 second time interval, while Givat Yoav-Bnei Yehuda and Kfar Vradim only have 15 seconds to reach safety.
The air raid exercise is part of a larger, nationwide drill meant to simulate full-scale war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which are ongoing through Thursday. The drill is taking lessons that have been learned from past events in the North, as well as those from the May fighting between Israel and terror groups in the Gaza Strip – Operation Guardian of the Walls – and from the Second Lebanon War in 2006.
Anna Ahronheim contributed to this report.