Croatian Canadairs take part in “Prometheus 14” EXE
Four crews of the Firefighting Squadron of the 93 Air Force and Air Defence Base are participating in the “EU Prometheus 2014”, Firefighting Exercise in Athens, Greece, as the aerial module, along with 16 members of the National Search and Rescue Directorate composing the land module, equipped with the vehicles and the assets for suppressing the vegetation fires.
The Exercise participants include Greece (the host), Croatia, Italy, Lithuania and Cyprus. The goal of the Exercise is to test the procedures of dispatching the international assistance teams, putting in place common EU civilian defence modules and assess the assistance co-ordination through the Emergency Response Centre in Brussels.
The Exercise scenario is taking place in real-time, featuring the activation of the EU Civil Protection mechanism upon the request from Greece, insufficiently capacitated to fight the large-scale fires threatening the settlements and industrial areas.
For the first time in the history of the EU Civil Protection mechanism, the Exercise is attended by Greek journalists, who are to use 20 different communication means and modern technology in real-time and cover the exercise at the national, tactical and operational level, and to produce three special editions on the field operations and the developments, containing the comments and analyses of the effectiveness of the institutions in fighting the fire and processing the alarms for the assistance.
The Deputy Commander of the Firefighting Squadron and Head of the Croatian Team at the Exercise, Captain Tomislav Vacenovski stated prior to the departure for Greece that although the Croatian firefighting forces developed their own firefighting tactics and aerial forces use system the Exercises were highly useful in terms of the exchange of experiences and approaches among the participants.«The Croatian firefighter teams have considerable experience in aerial firefighting; we have superbly trained canadair and airtractor crews, who have provided assistance to other countries, as was evident in Portugal last year, where we received commendations for our performance“.
Along with Portugal, Croatia also provided assistance with firefighting to Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece and Israel.