Goed presterende hulpdiensten in het regiocentrum van Roemenië (en)

The Centre Region in Romania encompasses six counties, totalling 14% of the Romanian territory and 2.5 million inhabitants. Though it regularly faces major disasters like forest fires in the summer or mountains accidents in the winter, the region was served by a single emergency service which was overwhelmed and couldn’t provide assistance for all people in emergency situations.

In 2008, the Association for Inter-community Development "Transylvania Centre" benefited from nearly EUR 7.9 m EU funding in order to improve the equipment of the operational units for emergency situations in each of the six counties.

24 special vehicles for complex intervention for extrication and emergency medical care, 6 foam-water fire fighting trucks, 6 special vehicles for heavy extrications, 3 special vehicles for nuclear, biological, chemical and radiological research, as well as equipment for the mobile command and control centre have been purchased. 647 persons were trained and the number of mobile units equipped for emergency response rose from 87 to 127.

Since the implementation of this project in May 2010, the average response time of the mobile intervention units increased to 27 minutes in rural areas, instead of 48 minutes before, and 13 minutes in urban ones instead of 25 minutes. Many more lives can be saved now!

Simion Cretu, General Manager of the Agency for Regional Development-Center, speaks about the project:

“Thanks to the EU funding and to the fruitful partnership between the six counties, the emergency services were extended throughout the Centre Region and serve now over 2.5 million inhabitants in serious situations like fires, car accidents extrications, rescuing people and animals, clearing trees and construction elements or destructing unexploded ammunition. We definitely have here a project where European funds were invested in the sustainable economic and social development of a very large community inRomania”.

More information:

Project website and video (in Romanian)

Romanian Ministry of Regional Development and Tourism (Managing Authority)

Mures County Council (Project leader)