Interior Minister of Estonia, Lauri Läänemets, will encourage the government to build new shelters where up to 730 thousand people can stay in case of danger, Estonian media ERR News reports.
Currently, the Estonian Rescue Service has identified 94 publicly accessible shelters that can accommodate up to 50 thousand people. The Interior Ministry urges that in the next ten years, so many shelters should be created to be able to offer a safe place to a much larger number of people if necessary.
Läänemets informed that one of the ways to achieve this would be to amend the guidelines of the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications on support for the renovation of buildings and include in it the requirement to transform basements into shelters during the renovation. He said that if the government approves this project, it could cost up to 15 million euros per year.
The minister added that the requirement to create a shelter when building new residential buildings should be mandatory, as it is in Finland.
The Estonian Interior Ministry is currently evaluating the technical requirements for shelters. It must be able to protect against the shock wave and debris, and the shelters must also have a generator, ventilation, and sanitation, the minister said. Läänemets said that a basement is built for the buildings anyway, and the shelter does not need to be a specially built room.
Shelters are necessary for both public buildings and private residential buildings. The minister said that in the future it will probably be necessary to set a deadline for adapting the buildings to meet the requirements, but for now, the idea of building shelters will be based on the principle of voluntariness. He added that it would be madness to demand that shelters be set up everywhere already.
Architect Margit Mutso pointed out that the government should have started thinking about shelters a year ago, and even now this issue has not been seriously considered, even when talking about buildings whose construction has not yet started. As an example, she mentioned the planned Tartu cultural center, whose requirements include a shelter, but there are still many things that are not considered regarding the specification.