Minister Rut Bízková has summoned the Central Flood Commission

At the request of Environment Minister Rut Bízková, the Central Flood Commission will meet today at 1 p.m. at the Office of the Government. A third degree flood alert is in effect in the Moravian-Silesian, Olomouc and Zlín Regions. Complications can be expected in the South Moravian Region as well.

Luděk Prudil of the Directorate General of the Fire Rescue Service said that roughly 2,800 members of the Fire Rescue Service had been deployed in the regions, that the Central Alert Plan was fully operational and that the Ministry of the Interior had started coordinating rescue activities. By noon today, about 900 persons had been evacuated from the affected areas. 160 of them now depend on emergency shelters. 238 persons had to be evacuated urgently, having refused to obey the call for preventive evacuation.

Central Flood Commission

The Central Flood Commission (ÚPK) is composed of representatives of the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of the Environment, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Finance and Fire Rescue Service. The ÚPK is a part of the Government’s department for flood prevention. It is responsible for the centrally coordinated prevention of floods and for supervising a situation when floods affect large areas in cases where regional flood commissions are not able to handle the problem by themselves or when coordination of their activities is desirable.

In the event of a state of danger and a state of emergency, the competences and duties of the ÚPK are transferred to the central body for crisis management. In such a case, the ÚPK becomes part of the Central Crisis Staff.