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Romania helps Greece in fight against fires with 150 firemen, specific intervention hardware
Romanian firefighters who are part of the national firefighting unit deployed in Greece arrived on Monday on the island of Rhodes, heavily affected by fires, told Agerpres.
The Romanian unit, made up of 52 firemen, aims to limit the spread of fires towards inhabited areas, together with the Greek and Slovak firefighters. Under the direct coordination of the Greek liaison officer, the mission of the Romanian firefighters consists in maintaining a line of protection between the front of the fire and the unaffected area, as well as supplying water to other special vehicles that will operate in the affected areas.
The hardware provided by the Romanian rescuers in the island of Rhodes is composed of six forest fire extinguishing machines, two large capacity fire extinguishers (10,000 liters), a 30-tonne water tank, two first-aid vehicles and command, a minibus transporting people.
This season, Romania has so far sent to Greece 150 firemen, specialists from the Department for Emergency Situations, the General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations and subordinate units. Some of them traveled by air, with an aircraft owned by the Ministry of National Defense, and others traveled by land with specific means of intervention.
Also, Romania sent a total of ten forest firefighting trucks to Greece, five 10,000 litre trucks, one 30,000 liter truck, a 30 tonne water tanker, a rapid intervention truck with a capacity of 600 liters of water, a mobile camp for staff accommodation, two minibuses and three first-response Duster cars and order.
The external support mission is carried out through the European Civil Protection Mechanism of the European Union.
Affected by one of the most persistent heatwaves in recent decades, with temperatures reaching over 46 degrees Celsius on Sunday, Greece has been fighting wildfires since last week. The violent fire that broke out in the tourist island of Rhodes, in the southeast of the Aegean Sea, led on Saturday, July 22, to the evacuation of 30,000 tourists, "the biggest operation (of this kind) ever carried out in Greece," according to the Greek authorities.
Romanian tourists who have accommodation reservations in the southern part of the island of Rhodes, affected by the fires, will be relocated to the northern areas, the National Association of Travel Agencies (ANAT) announced on Monday, adding that no travel cancellations have been registered so far. According to ANAT, approximately 15% of the surface of the island of Rhodes, namely the southern part, was affected by fires, which led to the temporary closure of several hotels in this area. However, charter flights to the island operate normally, thus ensuring the continuity of scheduled vacations.
The pre-positioning program is organized by the General Directorate of European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations - DG ECHO, in order to strengthen the resilience of the Greek authorities in managing this type of risk. The aim of the program is to reduce the response time in case of forest fires, to make the activity of preparing the intervention units belonging to the member states more efficient, as well as to improve the interoperability between the participating forces. The activation and operationalization of the specialized module for extinguishing forest fires is carried out for the execution of specific missions of monitoring and extinguishing outbreaks on the territory of Greece, in the locations established by the Greek partners.
