‘We’re happy everyone is OK,’ says family whose home was flattened by Hamas rocket

“If we had not gotten to the bomb shelter in time, I would now be burying all my family,” said, Robert Wolf, whose home was hit by a Hamas rocket Monday morning.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The British-Israeli Wolf family is thankful to have survived a Hamas rocket that burned their home to the ground on Monday morning.

“In general, we’re just happy that everyone is OK,” Talya Wolf told Ynet News on Tuesday.

That was the family consensus the day after they survived a direct hit from a Hamas rocket on the family home on Moshav Mishmeret in the Sharon region.

The missile, loaded with dozens of kilograms of explosives, landed at 5:20 a.m. Monday. It was sheer luck that any of the seven sleeping people heard the warning siren that gave the community 90 seconds to reach shelter.

The Jerusalem Post reported that the son, Daniel, had fallen asleep on the living-room couch and was the only one to hear the wailing sound blasting over the loudspeakers. He raced to wake up his parents, little sister and wife. He then scooped up his two-year-old and five-month old before entering the reinforced safe room, leaving the door open for the others.

The report said that his mother, Susan, had only reached the kitchen when the blast occurred and was therefore the most injured member of the family. His father, Robert, was in the yard, on his way back from warning another daughter who lived in an apartment attached to the house, and was all right.

Due to the safe room’s blast door being left ajar, the family members inside were lightly hurt. Two of the family’s five dogs were killed.

The entire family was taken to Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba to be examined; Daniel’s wife and infant remained overnight for observation, but Susan was transferred to Beilinson Hospital in Tel Aviv, where she was listed in moderate condition.

“She’s OK,” Talya said. “We’re awaiting CT results. They thought they might need to operate, now it’s not sure, but we hope that everything will be all right.”

The house is a total loss, Daniel stated. “We’ll have to rebuild from the ground up.”

But, as his sister noted, everything lost in the blast was a mere object, while the family survived.

Indeed, “if we had not gotten to the bomb shelter in time, I would now be burying all my family,” their father said.

“You know, people in the south suffer from this every day,” Talya pointedly added. “It’s too bad that they [the government] don’t relate to that with the same gravity that they’re relating to this situation.”