Tasks of Voluntary Rescue Teams in Extreme Weather Situations

Abstract

The occurrence of weather phenomena associated with extreme precipitation, temperatures and winds are not unusual in the history of meteorology in Hungary. However, in view of the characteristics of damages, it can be ascertained that they are usually witnessed at local (settlement) level; they damage the natural and built environment, jeopardise the safety of people and their financial resources. This greatly burdens the human resources of forces designated to respond to these anomalies, also their deployments, logistics and the management system of their equipment. The current Disaster Management Act created a resolution to this tension between damage prevention, response and rescue by declaring the possibilities of involving the voluntarism of citizens in organised and regulated frameworks. It means: in order to increase the country’s safety, central, territorial, later district and settlement-level voluntary rescue organisations and teams may be established. These units, considering their capabilities, are able to effectively and efficiently manage the impacts of anomalies due to the weather. In this publication, the author attempts to present Hungary’s vulnerability due to weather extremities with the help of the disaster management classification of settlements, to analyse the deployment possibilities of voluntary rescue organisations and rescue teams, taking into account their capabilities established in the framework of the national classification system.