Civil protection | Authorities show new equipment in response to ‘previous shortcomings’

The operational team of the local civil protection yesterday showcased the new equipment acquired by the various government services to “increase the capacity of response to catastrophes and other emergencies,” said Ma Io Kun, Commissioner-General of the Unitary Police Service (SPU) during a summary of the event, which was held at the Customs Service (SA) Marine Enforcement Department at Ilha Verde.

According to Ma, the acquisition of the new equipment comes as a consequence of the sequence of analysis made about the shortcomings and flaws detected in the response of the teams during and after the passage of Typhoon Hato and it has the purpose to not only  respond to typhoons and other catastrophes but also to situations “of rescue and reestablishment in a way to elevate our capacity of disaster prevention and reduction.”

“After Typhoon Hato occurred last year, the security authorities defined short, medium and long-term response plans to typhoons and security situations,” Ma said, adding, “after studies and analysis and taking into account the optimization of the attribution of services, specific equipment was acquired with which we intend to raise our capacity to respond to disasters.”

As the Commissioner-General highlighted, a large number of the 70 kinds of equipment and tools acquired has the specific purpose of addressing situations such as rescue within underground parking lots and flooded areas.

In that sense, the SA acquired equipment such as maritime drones, a submarine robot controlled by cable and several pieces of special diving equipment including underwater masks with communicator devices that will allow the divers to be in contact with the commanding team as well as each other, “as we realized during last year’s operations that the waters were too cloudy for the divers to be able to communicate by gestures [which is the usual method].”

Questioned as to the increase of the number of specialized staff, namely divers, Ma said, “Last year we counted a total of 16 divers… [Since then] we were able to train another five, so we have now a total of 21 divers available,” he said, while reiterating that the training of divers from rescue operations is a time-consuming task due the specificity of the tasks and the high skills needed, “which cannot be done in an accelerated mode.”

To the question of how much the equipment cost, the Commissioner-General of the SPU said he did not have the figures at the moment but remarked that “the equipment has been acquired according to the budget of each service and counted with the full support [of] the government,” and noted, “at this stage the cost of the equipment is not that important as we are talking about equipment that intends to save human lives [which are much more valuable],” he concluded.

To the question regarding whether, if a similar event to Hato struck Macau again, the authorities would still need to call for the help of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Ma replied, “we have an agreement established with the garrison [of the PLA] that, in case of need, the Chief Executive can request the support of the garrison through the Central government,” adding, “this is not exclusive to typhoon situations but also to other emergency situations, but what we should do now is […] improve our Civil Protection regime and the rescue [operations].”

Civil protection still operating under ‘Old Rules’

THE UNITARY Police Service’s (SPU) Commissioner-General, Ma Io Kun, has reiterated that, currently, the civil protection services “are still operating under the previous system, that is, its functionalities are only activated when a level 8 Typhoon signal is hoisted by the Meteorological and Geophysical Bureau and is called off when that signal lowers.”  Lei also stated that the measures announced by the government to change such system and put into force other classifications and warning levels are currently at the public consultation stage, adding that any typhoon or other calamity that happens within this period will have to be treated according to the “old rules” and not the new ones, that have not yet been put into force. Despite the equipment acquired, Ma noted that people cannot expect that the security authorities will have a much different operational capacity than in the previous years.