Last weekend’s storm showed that the country’s services are not properly coordinated with one another, Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs (AS) stressed in a video posted on X.
The prime minister is currently on an official visit to Ukraine. While there, he commented on the situation in Latvia. In his view, Latvia has not learned enough from the war in Ukraine.
According to Kulbergs, a storm of this magnitude would have been even more serious in winter, as people could have been left without water, electricity or heating.
“What could be observed from the state’s perspective is that the services are not coordinated with one another. And I mean all services,” Kulbergs said.
He said that yesterday he visited a military crisis management centre in Ukraine, where he observed how not only military operations are coordinated. The centre had a single screen that was also used to coordinate firefighters, police officers and other emergency services in the same way.
“We need to learn from Ukraine’s experience,” the prime minister said.
Kulbergs pledged that, if necessary, funding from the state budget’s contingency reserves would also be allocated to strengthen the services.
He also said that businesses themselves must be prepared for such crises. According to the prime minister, there should not be situations where, for example, a manufacturer loses its goods because of a power outage simply because it had failed to secure a generator that would allow the company to continue operating. If necessary, the government is prepared to introduce the required regulations, Kulbergs added.
The prime minister also criticised Latvijas Radio, saying that during the storm it had advised people to look for the latest information online.
He also highlighted that
around one-third of Latvia is covered by an alternative civil infrastructure communications system.
With relatively modest additional investment, the system could be expanded to cover the entire country, ensuring that communications are not disrupted during a crisis.
As previously reported, Latvia was hit on Saturday and during the following night by its strongest summer storm in decades, with wind gusts exceeding 30 metres per second in some areas. The storm caused widespread damage to both the electricity distribution and transmission networks, initially leaving around 277,000 customers across Latvia without power.
As of Monday morning, around 87,000 customers across Latvia were still experiencing power outages.
Read also: Latvian president raises alarm after storm: instructions alone are not enough in a crisis