Despite emergency cell broadcast warnings about a possible threat in the airspace, “life went on” in the Latgale region and people continued their normal daily activities, Armands Ruks, chief of the State Police of Latvia, admitted to journalists on Thursday after a Crisis Management Council meeting.
Mārtiņš Baltmanis, head of the State Fire and Rescue Service of Latvia (VUGD), informed that at 3:32 a.m. authorities received information about an explosion reportedly heard in Rēzekne on Rīgas Street. After inspecting the area around Rīgas Street, Atbrīvošanas Alley, and Viļānu Street, no dangerous factors or explosions were detected.
At 4:32 a.m., emergency services received a call to Komunālā Street, where fuel storage tanks had been damaged. According to established procedures, at 4:09 a.m. a request was received to issue emergency cell broadcast warnings in Ludza Municipality and Balvi Municipality. The warning was distributed within 28 seconds.
At 4:43 a.m., authorities received instructions to issue a warning in Rēzekne and Rēzekne Municipality. That message was sent within 63 seconds. The notification announcing the end of the threat was distributed at 8:20 a.m.
All three emergency notifications were also published on the 112.lv website and mobile application,
and there were no indications that these platforms were inaccessible to the public.
Ruks once again urged the public to comply with the restrictions outlined in emergency cell broadcast messages and to follow them carefully.
“For more than four hours the emergency alert remained active, but we saw that life continued as normal and people kept moving around in their daily routines,” Ruks said.
He also stated that after the drone struck the fuel storage tank, the area was secured and experts arrived at the scene. Information exchange between services had been good, although the situation was complicated by the fact that information was arriving simultaneously from many different sources, requiring authorities to quickly assess and process it.
At the same time,
a localized emergency alert had been declared in the region, and police resources were concentrated around possible threats.
A criminal investigation into the drone that crashed in Rēzekne is ongoing. Only during the investigation will authorities be able to determine the drone’s origin.
Latvia’s Interior Minister Rihards Kozlovskis of New Unity also admitted at a press conference in Rēzekne that after the emergency broadcast warning, “Rēzekne continued living its normal life.”
“As long as the warning has not been lifted, there is a real threat and it has not been confirmed that the airspace is safe, people should not begin their normal daily routines,” the politician urged. “This is a matter of responsibility for the whole society,” the minister stressed.
As previously reported by the LETA news agency, several drones entered Latvian airspace from Russia early Thursday morning, with at least one crashing in Rēzekne and damaging a fuel storage facility.
Authorities currently know of two crashed drones,
while the second is still being searched for and may be located in Rēzekne Municipality.
Information available to LETA does not indicate that the Latvian military shot down the two drones that crashed in Latgale.
Meanwhile, Defence Minister Andris Sprūds of The Progressives said in an interview with Latvian Television that there is an initial possibility that the drones were launched from Ukraine toward Russia, although this still needs to be evaluated.
Read also: Latvian Prime Minister dissatisfied: drone warning was sent only after the incident