Kikilias: Urgent need to implement anti-flooding projects

Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias spoke about the results brought by the new doctrine of the Fire Brigade during this year's fire fighting season, the change of data in dealing with natural disasters due to the climate crisis, but also about the urgent need to implement anti-flooding projects in an interview with "Athens Voice" on Sunday.

Our job is to protect the world. And how do we do that? By using, training and strengthening first of all the manpower, our firefighters, and the units of the forest commandos that we have built. We made 6, this year we almost tripled them (16 units, of which 10 are airborne) and now I am happy to announce that by decision of the Fire Headquarters, the forest commando units will reach 20.

Referring to the work of the Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Ministry he underlined "Major crises, major fires or major floods, earthquakes, significant major accidents... it is a crisis ministry, a ministry that manages tough situations. I think it is, if not the most difficult, of the most difficult ministerial positions. 

He also talked about the few - even non-existent in some areas - autumn rainfall as a result of which dozens of fires continue to break out every day across the country, due to the dryness of the soil and vegetation.

Finally, referring to the floods he said that his ministry is responsible for the prevention, preparation and coordination of all the mechanism's bodies as well as the on time information of the citizens. "But the main thing, which has to do with public officials and requires a lot of effort from the state as well, is that, well, flood prevention works were done 50, 40, 30, 20 years ago for specific storm sizes and flood phenomena. If now these are stronger and multiple as the storms "Ianos" and "Daniel" have shown us, then flood prevention projects of a different size and parameters are required per region" Kikilias said.

AMNA