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Israel Electric Corp. Visitors Center
Tamar Wisemon
(October 10, 2000) Hof Shemen, Haifa (also in Ashkelon and Haderah)Tel.: (04) 864-6176Open: Sun-Thurs 7 a.m.-3:30 p.m. (prior appointment necessary); intended mainly for groups, but open to individuals during Hol Hamo�ed and other vacations.Wheelchair-accessible; Admission: free
High fences, dingy warehouses and security guards overshadow the neat, modernist visitors center by the sea, where fish breed in the warm water from the nearby power station. At the entrance, a copper silhouette of a repairman scaling an electricity pylon accompanies a verse that conveniently contains the word �hashmal� (modern Hebrew for �electricity�) from the Book of Ezekiel, where it means �heavenly fire.�
Inside, an overhead power cable suspended from the ceiling, and models of an electric generator and the national distribution grid, amply demonstrate the topic, but it is Inbal, 8-year-old heroine of a witty, action-packed film, who shines. Worried that Israel Electric will run out of power to keep her night light glowing, the blonde, bespectacled girl embarks on a journey to discover how electricity is created, setting sirens wailing as she dashes frenetically around the plant.
After this lively lesson, an enthusiastic Haifa Technion undergraduate is our guide past the on-site fire-station and medical center on our own tour of the electricity plant. Security is tight; for safety reasons big groups won�t get this far; and closed shoes are advised in case of spills through the metal-grating floors.
I don a mandatory safety helmet and feel myself shrink to Inbal�s size, engulfed by the deafening roar and throbbing heat of a Herculean skeleton of furnaces, pipes and metal platforms that rise over six stories high.
From a row of turbines spaced like monumental, vibrating tombstones, we enter a bright, octagonal room. This is the plant�s NASA-like nerve-center, crammed with computer screens, air-conditioned and silent, save for the electronic heartbeat of its monitors.
We descend in an industrial elevator and exit past Haifa�s first power plant, opened by Pinhas Rutenberg (founding father of the Palestine Electric Company) in 1925. Silence out here has a different meaning, the quiet of a fossil whose power has been spent.
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Good Taste
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