Firefighting Equipment for Rescuers from Niksic Presented

Valuable equipment for protection from fires procured within the project of FORS Montenegro, “Cross-border Fire Protection”, has been presented today, in the premises of the Protection and Rescue Service of Niksic Municipality. During the presentation, speeches were given by Mr Veselin Grbović, the Mayor of Nikšić, Mr Veselin Gardašević, Head of Protection and Rescue Service of Nikšić Municipality, Milan Radović, Head of Department for Training and Operational Activities in the Directorate for Emergency Management of the Ministry of Interior of Montenegro and Mr Veselin Šturanović, Executive Director of FORS Montenegro. Total of 50 sets of firefighting equipment were procured for rescuers from Niksic, worth € 23,500 and including firefighting overalls, helmets and belts, protective gloves, backpack firefighting pumps, firefighting brooms, as well as four lamps for helmets.

Apart from the equipment procured, for us equally important project component is capacity building of rescuers from Montenegro and BiH, during which the participants had the opportunity to improve their knowledge and skills through two cross-border trainings on prevention, protection and mitigation of consequences of fires, as well as to test the level of readiness and rescue skills through two cross-border demonstration exercises. During these events, the rescuers practiced extinguishing of fires using special fire fighting vehicles, extinguishing from air with Aero-helicopter Unit of the Ministry of Interior and using water bombs thrown out of the airplanes, descending of fire fighters with backpacks from a helicopter, field search for the disappeared and transporting and treatment of the injured. In this way we tried to make contribution to complete capacity building of protection and rescue services. The trainings and exercises were attended by 12 members of the Protection and Rescue Service of Niksic Municipality, and this project is a continuation of the work of FORS Montenegro and the Municipality of Nikšić on strengthening this Service, which has been done by several joint project so far.