EarthquakeExercise2018/ First Foreign Aircraft Lands At 90th Air Base Otopeni To Collect Foreign Nationals

The first foreign aircraft, a Slovak governmental plane, landed on Monday at the 90th Air Base in Otopeni to take over foreign nationals injured in a hypothetical earthquake, as part of the Earthquake 2018 drill, head of the Department for Emergency Situations Raed Arafat announced.

Bucharest (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 15th Oct, 2018 ) :The first foreign aircraft, a Slovak governmental plane, landed on Monday at the 90th Air Base in Otopeni to take over foreign nationals injured in a hypothetical earthquake, as part of the Earthquake 2018 drill, head of the Department for Emergency Situations Raed Arafat announced.

'It's a state-owned plane, a presidential plane, complete with a meeting room where we sat down with our colleague to explain the situation to him. Their capacity is 30 seats plus a stretcher, but the upright seats can be lowered to lie-flat mode, meaning they can take the mildly wounded or homeward bound people,' Arafat said.

Leader of the EURACARE Slovakia team Matus Hamza explained that their task is to evacuate and provide psychological and social support to foreigners who need to be taken out of Romania, and the team can be mobilized 12 hours after the launch of the call.

There are four governmental aircraft available for such missions. Given their governmental status, they have diplomatic clearance and they can access areas where other planes or even charter planes cannot land, Matus Hamza said.

According to the five-day hypothetical disaster scenario, Romania was hit by a 7.5-magnitude earthquake Saturday morning and the toll as of Monday morning was over 3,000 dead; 5,200 injured; and 420 fully collapsed buildings. Over 40,000 people were left homeless, 35,000 are cut off electricity and 45,000 have no potable water.

The national drill 'Earthquake 2018' is aimed at the implementation of the National post-quake contingency plan and started Saturday at 9:00 hrs; the quake - having the epicenter in theseismic region of Vrancea - may be followed by several aftershocks. Bucharest is the hardesthit area.