Emergency medical teams and firefighters responded Thursday afternoon to a fourth-floor apartment on Moshe Dayan Boulevard in Jerusalem after a 70-year-old man and woman were found unconscious inside their home. The call came into Magen David Adom's dispatch center at 5:48 p.m.
Paramedics and EMTs arriving at the scene encountered a complex situation: the couple was lying on their bedroom floor, both unresponsive. After providing initial lifesaving treatment on site, medical teams evacuated them to Hadassah Mount Scopus Hospital in serious condition. The man required sedation and intubation during transport.
MDA paramedic Nadav Tayeb and motorcycle unit medic David Levi, among the first responders, described the dramatic moments: "We saw a man and woman in their 70s unconscious. We provided lifesaving medical treatment, sedated and intubated the man, and evacuated them to the hospital in serious condition." The urgent medical intervention focused on stabilizing vital signs and providing respiratory support, given the couple's collapsed systems, with the goal of getting them to the hospital's trauma unit as quickly as possible.
The simultaneous loss of consciousness of two people in the same enclosed space immediately raised concerns that this was not a random medical event but rather environmental exposure, possibly a dangerous gas leak or toxic substance. This prompted the dispatch of specialized teams and firefighters from the Uma district station in the Jerusalem region. Firefighters began extensive searches of the fourth floor and the entire building, deploying detectors and dedicated monitoring equipment to measure air composition and toxicity levels in the home.
