More emergency calls for help were received here today from settlements in all parts of the country surrounded by rising waters. Some of the settlements in the Negev are completely cut off. Special rescue squads have been rushed to the affected areas.
Military and civilian planes today dropped food supplies to a number of isolated settlements in the Negev and Galilee. The military planes parachuted bread and other foodstuffs in the Lake Tiberias area, while three Piper Cub civilian planes, belonging to the Israeli Flying Club, dropped sacks with food supplies into flooded immigrant camps in the Majdal section of southern Israel.
Vast truck gardens have been washed away by the rising waters. The entire settlement of Yagur, near Haifa, is flooded and major damage to the houses and the fields are reported from there. Roads in some parts of the country are submerged under three feet of swirling water.
Mrs. Golda Myerson, Minister of Social Welfare, today reported in Parliament that 23 of the 163 immigrant camps in the country have been hit severely by the gales. From nine of them the inhabitants had to be evacuated. She said that 64, 000 families are living in camps in tin huts, 13, 000 in wooden huts and 10, 500 in tents.
The Minister praised the aid given by the army in rescue operations in the flooded areas. She said that additional labor units are being despatched to the affected areas to assist flood victims. At the same time, she appealed for an increase in civilian volunteers to work in the flooded immigrant camps.
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