An Hour Later, Second Siren Sounds

I'm in the hallway, listening to the second siren of the day in Haifa. The siren is pretty long - that's good, it means people have adequate warning time to head into safety - either in a bomb shelter or in their "protected room".
We heard only one boom now and it appears to be over. We'll stay here for another bit just to make sure there, and then we'll go back to the living room to check the room.

A note on the "protected room," or mamad as it's called in Hebrew: every new home in Israel must have one of these. It has thicker walls; the windows must open with hinges and have a heavy metal cover so the glass doesn't explode. The room's door is usually made out of thick metal with rubber lining so that it can be made resistant to chemical gases. Apartments in older buildings, like ours, do not have a mamad. We're expected to go to the local bomb shelter when the air raid warning sirens come on.