“Earthquake 2018” national exercise comes to an end

“Earthquake 2018 is the name of the largest natural disaster simulation exercise staged in the European Union.

Bogdan Matei, 18.10.2018, 12:45

“Earthquake 2018” the largest civil protection drill in recent years in Europe, has given the Romanian authorities the chance to test their response capabilities and cooperation in case of a strong earthquake. The decision of choosing Romania was not taken by chance as together with Spain, Italy and Greece, the country is considered one of the most vulnerable EU countries to earthquakes. In the past two centuries Romania has seen 7 earthquakes measuring more than 7 on the Richter scale. The drill brought together all the structures that should intervene in the aftermath of a 7.5 earthquake followed by aftershocks, which would cause numerous victims and would wreak havoc mainly on capital Bucharest.

Rescuers had to deal with difficult situations, with thousand of dead and wounded and people left without homes. The army mounted mobile hospitals and camps for the victims in the villages surrounding Bucharest. State-of-the art mobile hospitals have arrived from Israel, Italy and Norway, including Intensive Care Units, while Austria and Hungary sent in ambulances. According to Raed Arafat, head of the Department for Emergency Situations with the Romanian Interior Ministry, the drill was an investment in the training of rescue services to cope with real crisis situations. The exercise has also revealed a series of shortcomings that must be corrected.

Raed Arafat: “Bureaucratic procedures must be simplified, communications must be improved, the command center better organized and there is going to be a detailed report on that. Then it’s our turn, I mean the Department for Emergency Situations jointly with the Inspectorate to come up with an implementation plan, of course after getting the green light from the Ministry, the Government.”

The exercise was also attended by the EU’s Cypriote Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management, Christos Stylianides, who said he was impressed by the participants and resources deployed. In turn, the representative of the European Civil Protection Module, EU Modex, Bastian Harms, has evaluated positively both the professionalism of the Romanian rescuers and the readiness of the community partners to help Romania in case of a major earthquake. According to Bastian Harms we could never be ready enough to cope with situations like these, which means that we must continue our training at European level to get better at it, and a good example is what happened in Bucharest these days. It is difficult not only to provide assistance, Harms went on to say, but also to receive assistance, because you must be ready for it.

Reports on the results of the exercise are to be made public also by experts from the specialized structures of NATO and the EU.