27/5/2005
Romanians Receive Rapid Flood Relief

Heavy rains in April and May caused floods and landslides in Romania, affecting thousands of people and destroying hundreds of houses. The Romanian Government responded on 19 May by launching an appeal for European civil protection assistance, triggering a rapid response from the Monitoring and Information Centre (MIC) of the European Commission. This body immediately alerted the civil protection authorities of the Member States, keeping both NATO and the UN informed of its relief efforts.

The first European assistance convoys arrived on Saturday last week; more are on their way. This rapid response was possible thanks to lessons learned from providing assistance in a broad range of previous disasters both inside and outside the EU. This has included the floods in Central Europe (2002) and France (2003), the Prestige accident (2002), the earthquakes in Algeria (2003), Iran (2003) and Morocco (2004), the forest fires in France and Portugal (2003, 2004), the explosion in Asunción (2004), the tsunami emergency in South Asia (2004) and (snow) storms in Sweden and Albania (2005).

Luxemburg dispatched diving equipment to help the Romanian civil protection authorities. An Austrian convoy consisting of 15 trucks and 70 personnel arrived on Saturday with several high capacity water pumps, power generators and cable traction devices. Spain and Malta are preparing to provide water pumps, disinfectants and related assistance and Finland has offered power generators, submersible water pumps, cable traction devices, waterproof coats and diving equipment.

Commenting on the importance of an effective disaster response capacity for the EU, the responsible European Commissioner for the Environment, Stavros Dimas said: “Immediate civil protection assistance, provided through the Community Civil Protection Mechanism, is certainly one of the most powerful and tangible expressions of European solidarity with the victims of disasters. The Member States’ generous response to Romania’s request for assistance underscores the importance of further efforts at European level to strengthen the co-ordination of the civil protection mechanism.”