21.06.2007 - RMK and Estonian Rescue Board improve cooperation for fighting forest fires 29.09

On Thursday, 21 June, RMK and Estonian Rescue Board will conduct complex training for fighting forest fires. The goal being to determine the readiness of different participants for discovering a forest fire, acting after receiving information about a fire, and locating the fire outdoors.

During the exercises, 2 smoke packages will be ignited in the forest in the NE and SE regions of RMK. The packages will be located via air surveillance and their coordinates will be transmitted to the rescue centre. In the case of a level II call, 2 fire trucks and the operational officer must reach the fire from the closest fire-station. The person from RMK responsible for fire safety in the respective area must also get to the fire, according to the coordinates transmitted from the aeroplane.

“The entire course of the exercises, including different phases and information exchange, will be recorded on a timeline by observers to be used later to analyse and evaluate the readiness of the different participants for operating in emergency situations and how to improve it. The most important is the information transmitted by the aircraft, its movement and processing in the rescue centre," said Toomas Väät, RMK Environmental Manager of Forest Management.

“Cooperation between different parties during a forest fire is unavoidable and thus such exercises, and the analysis of their different phases, are absolutely essential. The resources of different authorities and the contacts of responsible persons are added to the forest fire fighting plan for prompt action during emergencies,” added Heiki Kurisoo, Head of the Monitoring Service of the Rescue Department of the Estonian Rescue Board.
An agreement has been concluded between RMK and Estonian Rescue Board so that an RMK representative will be involved in the work of the fire-fighting headquarters during forest fires. In the spring, joint training between these two agencies was conducted across Estonia. To ensure the effective extinguishing of forest fires, RMK will check and, where necessary, fix the fire protection strips and water intake points in state forests.
The locations for the exercises have been chosen according to the EMHI fire hazard map to be situated in areas with no or low fire hazard so that the rescue board wouldn’t be overloaded in regions with a high fire hazard.

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