Students made tourniquets out of belts, socks after ordnance exploded during hike

The dozens of students who were on a school trip near the Lebanon border Monday when a piece of unexploded ordnance detonated provided each other with first aid as they awaited emergency services, they recounted.

One made a video call to his father, who instructed him on how to apply a tourniquet on himself, after he took shrapnel to the leg.

“He called me right away, we scrambled the [Israel Defense Forces] and Magen David Adom [paramedics] and explained at the same time how to make a tourniquet,” recalled Dvir Klein of his son, according to Haaretz.

One of the teens wounded in the blast was Yair Frankenthal, 15, a youth volunteer for MDA, who provided CPR and first aid to his more severely wounded classmates.

“After the big explosion I heard, I felt that I was injured too, but I immediately started checking who needed medical help so that I could help using the knowledge I had gained in the first aid course I took as a youth volunteer with the MDA,” a MDA statement quoted Frankenthal as saying.

He said he noticed one boy was seriously wounded and did not have a pulse, so he did CPR on him until an ambulance arrived.

One of the first MDA medics who arrived at the scene said afterwards that he was impressed by the students’ efforts to help one another after the blast: “Despite the difficult scenes and distress, the boys cooperated with me in an extraordinary way. Each one tried to help his friend as much as he could, some even making tourniquets to stop the bleeding.”

Tamir Duadi, a member of the civil defense squad for nearby Kibbutz Manara, choked back tears as he spoke to Channel 12 about what he saw when he arrived at the scene.

“It was a group of young people, kids. They were sitting there, holding their friends, taking care of them, making them tourniquets,” he said.

“Awesome kids did great work with me, until MDA arrived.”

Yedidia Atia, one of the students on the hike, told the TV network that a friend of his — apparently Elazar Yair Wilensky – the 9th grader who was killed in the incident — spotted the submunition off-trail, and went to check it out.

“He walked over, and he went down into the trees, and we said, it’s connected to a missile, but we didn’t treat it as important; he played with it, played with it, and then in the end it exploded,” he said.

“A lot of guys fell over, a lot of guys were bleeding, they were hit with shrapnel, they didn’t know; also, there was a shockwave,” Atia recalled.

“Right away we called MDA, whoever we could, they all came right away; [in the meantime] we made tourniquets with belts, with socks, with whatever we could, and ultimately they evacuated all of us, thank God.”

Students told the outlet that Wilensky was “a very curious kid, smart and knowledgeable,” explaining: “He was particularly interested in wars, in missiles and weapons, he knew different types of weapons and could explain all the little details about them.”

Recalling the minutes leading up to the explosion, the students said: “Elazar went down from the trail in the direction of the wooded area, apparently after he spotted an object that looked to him like part of a missile.”

“He got very excited at the discovery, and he started to explain to his friends what it was, and what it was used for. He spoke with confidence and passion, like someone who really knows about the subject.”

The students denied that any adult had warned them about dangerous objects on the trail. After the incident, additional ordnance was found in the area.