Over 5,000 people rescued in incidents last year: report

Joining Deputy PM Dung, who is also the committee’s chairman, were leaders from the committee’s office and representatives from other relevant ministries and agencies.

Reports at the conference showed that in 2019, the committee coordinated well with the concerned ministries, agencies and localities to mobilise more than 207,000 people and 7,000 means to serve incident response and search and rescue work on 3,505 cases.

Thanks to these efforts, 5,143 people and 252 vehicles were saved, including 51 cases with 225 people and 16 vehicles related to foreign elements. In addition, over 510,000 vehicles and nearly 2.4 million people operating at sea were alerted on dangerous weather situations and to seek for a safe place to stay until the weather had subsided.

Air medical services helped safely transport patients and rescue sick and injured people on islands and at sea, while legal documents related to natural disaster response and search and rescue have been perfected and institutionalised.

However, delegates at the event also said that incident and natural disaster response and search and rescue still face many difficulties and challenges, requiring more efforts and responsibility.

Participants discussed solutions and directions to boost the work in the future, including strengthening communication on the implementation of legal documents on incident and natural disaster response, while actively disseminating knowledge about storms, floods, flash floods and landslides to the public to improve preventative spirit.

They also proposed to improve the quality of natural disaster forecasting and warning and to enhance the capacity of staff in charge of forecasting to make timely and accurate forecasts, in addition to promoting research and application of science and technology in the field of response to climate change, prevention of incidents and natural disasters, and search and rescue.

It is also important to strengthen international cooperation and learn from other countries' experiences in carrying out tasks, while regularly reviewing and adjusting plans for disaster prevention and control to get ready to effectively deal with any unexpected situations.