Distress still prevails in the flood areas, but an analysis of the reaction to the floods should not be long in coming. The head of the Federal Office for Disaster Relief is calling for quick reforms.
From the point of view of the head of the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Aid (BBK), Armin Schuster, the severe weather disaster in western Germany has shown that the planned reforms in dealing with transnational crises cannot wait.
“With the already decided reorientation in civil protection, we are getting exactly where we need to go,” said Schuster to the German press agency on Friday. However, the speed at which these plans are implemented must be increased.
The Conference of Interior Ministers agreed last June to set up a joint federal-state competence center at the BBK. In the event of a crisis, all actors involved in managing an acute crisis should come together there. In order to ensure better coordination, it is important that in such a case, where drinking water, rescue helicopters, rescue vehicles and helpers are needed at different locations at the same time, “everyone sits at the same table,” emphasized Schuster.
If you are only discussing climate protection policy now, that is not enough. From his point of view, it is also important “that everyone considers an emergency with multiple problems to be a realistic scenario” for which Germany must prepare itself. Schuster, who took over the management of the office last autumn, said: “We must have a national strategy to strengthen resilience and crisis preparedness.”
In the corona pandemic, Schuster criticized the fact that, due to the responsibility of the federal states for disaster control in peacetime, there was initially no nationwide overview of protective suits, masks and other relevant materials. On the question of whether something should be changed in the federal distribution of tasks in times of climate change and cyber attacks, there are different views in the parties.
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