An international field exercise of the civil protection system “The Sava River Basin at Županja 2017” held within the EMBER project

The international field exercise of the civil system called “The Sava River Basin at Županja 2017” within the EMBER project was held on 20 October at the “Poloja” beach on the Sava River near Županja, Republic of Croatia.

Saving the vulnerable population from their flooded homes; search, find and extract drowned people from the water; Giving first aid; disposing of saved and evacuated people; Coordination of the operational forces (coordinator at the site) were the tasks shown in the exercise.

The team responsible for carrying out the exercise was composed of: coordinator at the site; intervention team for water rescue (Vukovar Underwater Activities Club and the Croatian Mountain Rescue Service-Vinkovci Station); intervention team for logistics (city association of the Red Cross in Vukovar, Vinkovci, Županja and Ilok); as well as the appropriate teams from the AP Vojvodina (Mountain Rescue Service of Serbia, Red Cross of Vojvodina, expert team of the PWMC “Vode Vojvodina”, a team from the Municipality of Šid and a team from the City of Sremska Mitrovica.

The aim of the exercise was to check the equipment, competence and aptness of the intervention teams for water rescue.

The project “Ever-moving border emergency response – EMBER”, in which the European Affairs Fund of AP Vojvodina is one of the project partners, and which total amount is EUR 1,028,169, is one of the successfully contracted projects in the IPA Cross-border Cooperation Programme between Croatia and Serbia, aimed at the enhancement of regional level cooperation through joint systems and approaches in response to flooding in the Sava river basin in the cross-border region.