 Without doubt the ambucycle is United Hatzalah’s biggest contribution to emergency first response. Ambucycles are regular motorcycles used by United Hatzalah’s volunteers throughout Israel to make sure they get to emergencies within the first few minutes. Ambucycles, due to their size, are not held up by traffic jams or narrow streets, unlike cars and ambulances.
Ambucycles incorporate a case that is designed to hold the volunteer’s medical equipment. No volunteer leaves his bag behind – just like they don’t leave their ambucycles behind. No matter where a volunteer is – having lunch with family, eating out with friends or at work – he or she is always ready to leave whatever he is doing in order to race to an emergency on his personal ambucycle.
Thanks to these distinctive motorcycles and United Hatzalah’s unique LifeCompass Technology, the average response time of an ambucycle medic is 2.5 minutes. One medic treats 550 people every year. In a quarter of these cases the volunteer is attending to life threatening emergencies. United Hatzalah currently operates around 350 ambucycles.
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Ambutractors
Whereas ambucycles are the key to rapid response in an urban environment, there are plenty of places in Israel which cannot be approached by cars or motorcycles: mountain paths and desert roads, among others, are difficult to approach, but emergencies can occur at these places too.
That is why United Hatzalah has 5 ambutractors stationed around the country and uses them for rescue operations requiring a different, more powerful 4-wheel vehicle to save those in trouble.
The Kinneret fleet
United Hatzalah also has a small fleet stationed on Israel’s biggest lake, the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee). While seemingly small and harmless, the Kinneret can become dangerous, especially when swimmers are not paying attention to its tidal waves.
United Hatzalah has an ambuboat and two jet skis stationed in Tiberias, with a group of Tiberias volunteers trained as rescue divers and thus are qualified to enter the lake to save lives.
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