Estonia's largest evacuation exercise ends
On Sunday afternoon, Estonia's largest evacuation rescue exercise to date, Lõuna Sild 2024 (South Bridge), with over 1,000 participants ended. Organizers said it had gone smoothly and without incident, but lessons can still be learned.
The three-day exercise created a realistic situation to test emergency services and local governments' responses in Põlva, Võru, Valga, Tartu and Viljandi counties.
The scenario planned the evacuation of over 37,000 people and started on Friday (October 4).
Approximately 200 experts from the Defense League and Women's Voluntary Defence Organization (Naiskodukaitse), 70 from the Rescue Board, 50 from local governments, and 50 from the regional crisis committee also took part.
Minister of the Interior Lauri Läänemets (SDE) visited the large-scale exercise on Saturday at Täääks and Abja-Paluoja evacuation points.
He said it is important to practice this kind of exercise to check the response speed, command structures and chains needed to move large numbers of people.
"The knowledge and crisis preparedness of everyone who participated in the exercise will certainly be improved after this weekend. The next goal should be to organize an exercise that covers all the Baltic states, so that we can practice evacuation in cooperation with Latvia and Lithuania, including cross-border movement," Läänemets said.
Margo Klaos, general director of the Rescue Board, said the evacuation was carried out smoothly and without incident. Analysis of the exercise will now take place to see what could be improved.
"The most important lesson was something we already knew — a large-scale evacuation is, in other words, large-scale cooperation," he said. "What reassures me is that we were able to successfully carry out both the necessary management and cooperation activities," he said.
Commander of the Defense League Maj. Gen. Ilmar Tamm said the exercise showed what "the first seed" of a real-life large evacuation would look like and what needs to be done.
Tamm praised the Women's Voluntary Defence Organization which plays a big role in civil defense: "You can see that this is not the first time they have done this, and the level of training and previous experience is paying off."
He added that similar exercises must be organized in the future so that all parties, including local governments, are ready for a crisis.
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Editor: Helen Wright
