PHOTOS: Sderot Bus Shelters

[WMATAGMOAGH]

Here are photos of bus shelters in Sderot, in the western Negev in Israel.  Sderot is just a few kilometers from the Gaza Strip and is the most frequent target of Qassam rocket attacks from Gaza.  As a result of the ongoing situation, in which rockets have been fired for the past eight years, nearly all city infrastructure has been made to include bomb shelters, since if a code red alarm goes off, one has no more than 15 seconds to get to safety before the rocket lands somewhere.  Every building in the city now has a bomb shelter.  However, places such as playgrounds and bus stops are usually too far away from a shelter to be reached in 15 seconds.  As a result, every bus stop has a bomb shelter built into it.  Here are three photos of such shelters:

[Tritransit Area]

That's phenomenal and honestly quite scary if you are out there.  Are the shelters undergound or is that structure supposed to hold up?

[WMATAGMOAGH]

I didn't actually check out the shelters.  Fortunately, no code red alarms went off while I was there, though two rockets landed in the nearby desert the same day I was there (and there were a few shot today, despite the supposed "cease fire" that is in effect right now).  My guess is there isn't an underground do it, and that the amount of concrete in the structure is enough protection should the rocket actually land on the shelter.  I say that since at a playground we visited, some of the play structures are also bomb resistant and there is no underground component to them:





There is an orange line in the caterpillar where the kids are supposed to go beyond in order to be safe in the event of a code red alarm.  My guess is the bus shelters are probably similar.