Written about us

Representing Hungary

The NPP fire-fighters have successfully completed the vast international exercise organized by the NATO Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre.

Hungary was represented by the National Directorate General for Disaster Management (OKF), the Budapest Directorate for Civil Protection, the Special Rescue Services of Budapest and the Facility Fire Service of Atomix Kft. The team of the NPP Fire Service consisted of Miklós Lengyel, Roland Fehér, Zsolt Lesták, Ferenc Széles, József Horváth, Szilárd Papp, Ferenc Bűn and Attila Kruller and was accompanied by József Tóbi. All of them evaluated the exercise, from the point of view of diversity of tasks and number of participants and based on summarized experiences, as a one of especially high significance and very useful.

József Tóbi training lecturer: - The exercise was aimed at strengthening cooperation between European countries in a disaster management situation. We had to prepare for an earthquake and biological terror danger at an industrial seaport and had to participate collectively in management and elimination. The emphasis was all along on cooperation so, for example, when we rescued the injured persons, another unit attended them and we had to provide for their transport. The fire occurred when chemicals were exploded was extinguished by Serb fire-fighters and decontamination was carried out by Austrian ones while we arranged for evacuation in cooperation with a Croatian mountain rescue service.

Zsolt Lesták subordinate fire-fighter: - 20-40 km from Biograde several damage locations were established and we had to carry out the tasks always according to different assumptions, at one time in the framework of a fire extinguishing and alpine rescue exercise and at another time we had to reveal whether hazardous materials were present. We divided our team into two sections. A complete fire squad brought the appliances and some joined the team in charge of alpine tasks. Everything depended on coordination and cooperation of the team.

Roland Fehér driver: - We concentrated on reaching the location safely rather than on fastness. Each country brought its best and most attractive appliances. We participated with a general fire hose and, similarly to others, when something had to be solved lacking an appropriate device, we asked for assistance. On occasion of a technical rescue when we had to remove 1-ton concrete elements from trucks, the Moldavian technical rescue team helped us with a crane.

Miklós Lengyel service commander: - More than forty nations participated in the exercise and, as some of them delegated only observers, the disaster management exercise was attended actually by 22 countries. We could experience such adventures, for example when we extinguished fire at sea on board of a NATO warship, which we never experience under normal circumstances. We met several times Dr Árpád Muhoray, the Deputy Director-General of OKF who contacted us separately and congratulated to our team for its successful participation.

Anna Lovászi
Nuclear Power Plant - July