ZAGREB, 10 January, 2021 - In a humanitarian campaign organised by the Breznicki Hum Municipality with the help of a Slovenian volunteer firefighters association, PGD Paloma Sladki Vrh,  and Austrian OBR fire brigade, 24 trucks and vans on Saturday delivered aid for people in the quake-hit areas of Sisak, Petrinja and Glina.

The convoy entered Croatia on Saturday morning at the Dubrava Krizovljanska border crossing.

According to the press release, the convoy, accompanied by police, delivered large quantities of construction materials, construction tools, beams, planks and slats, generators and heaters, textiles, pillows, blankets, field beds, food, water and numerous other necessities for the many inhabitants of the quake-hit area.

Upon arrival at the storage terminal of a company called NIL-Z in Petrinja, they were welcomed by Petrinja Mayor Darinko Dumbovic, who thanked them for collecting and delivering valuable help.

The secretary of the Slovenian firefighters association, Valentina Oslovnik, its commander, Robert Oslovnik, and the commander of Austrian OBR fire brigade, Johannes Matzhold, expressed their satisfaction with participating in the campaign.

The head of Breznicki Hum Municipality, Zoran Hegedic, thanked the participants of the campaign and firefighter from Breznicki Hum, Slovenia and Austria.

Hegedic also thanked the Croatian customs for the excellent cooperation during the arrival of the convoy, Croatian police for accompanying them and all those who helped in any way.

Saturday, 5 September 2020 – More than 100 policemen were searching for the escaped man, but in the end it was a firefighters Malinois Belgian Shepherd that sniffed him out.

When detainee Branimir Čaleta managed to escape from custody on September 2, armed police were immediately on his tail. They knew where to look – he was seen running in the direction of Turska kula and the Park Mladosti in Split, near the Poljud football stadium.

But, though more than 100 officers were searching for the wanted man, in the end, it was a firefighters Malinois Belgian Shepherd called Flip that sniffed him out.


The Malinois Belgian Shepherd is used by armed services, the police and for search and rescue all over the world © TC Perch

Details of Flip's assistance were revealed in an interview undertaken with the dog's handler, Split firefighter Joško Čule by the 24 sata news outlet. Although he was not allowed to reveal details of the fugitive's capture, Joško did speak about his dog.

Flip is a search dog of the Public Fire Brigade of the City of Split, a firefighters Malinois Belgian Shepherd. He was trained to search in all environments, from urban areas and ruins to wild nature, and in all weather conditions. He is a family dog, loves spending time with children, and with the firefighters. He is an active member of the firefighting team in Split and works every day. Flip is taken into the field when necessary and has so far participated in four searches for lost people. He found them all.

This firefighters Malinois Belgian Shepherd is just one of the types of Belgian Shepherd. The other three are called Groenendael, Laekenois, and Tervuren. In Belgium, their country of origin, all four types are considered to be varieties of a single breed, differentiated by hair color and texture. Elsewhere, they are sometimes considered separate breeds.

Flip, the firefighters Malinois Belgian Shepherd is typical in having tan to brown short hair with patches of black. Belgian Shepherd Dogs are highly intelligent, alert, and sensitive to everything going on around them, and they form very strong relationship bonds. They are loyal, intelligent, fun, make good family pets and are very receptive to being trained, thus explaining the position of this firefighters Malinois Belgian Shepherd.


A Belgian Shepherd with a close relative, a Dutch Shepherd © Marius Zopole 

It is not only firefighters who use these dogs. They are used as search and rescue dogs by other services and as police and military dogs. They have a good reputation as sniffer dogs, particularly in the field of finding illegal drugs. Several Malinois Belgian Shepherds have been decorated for bravery. They are very protective of their owners and handlers.

The US Secret Service, Israel Defense Forces, Indian NSG commando unit and Royal Australian Air Force use Malinois Belgian Shepherds in their work. The breed is second in number only to the German Shepherd for use across the whole of the US Armed Forces.

The fugitive Branimir Čaleta ran away from police while he was at court in Split, where he was appearing charged with the murder of his one-time girlfriend, a Ukrainian national. Čaleta is now back in custody, thanks to Flip, the firefighters Malinois Belgian Shepherd.

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Mljet has been given the responsibility of caring for Dubrovnik-Neretva County's very first firefighting boat, which has been procured thanks to EU funds.

As Morski writes on the 2nd of March, 2019, Dubrovnik-Neretva County prefect Nikola Dobroslavić handed over the first firefighting vessel in Dubrovnik-Neretva County in Dubrovnik's port on Friday. The vessel is named Sveti Florijan, named after the patron saint of Linz.

The vessel was handed over by the prefect to the mayor of Mljet, Đivo Marketa, who immediately presented and subsequently handed it over to commander of Mljet's fire brigade, to Mario Dabelić.

Prefect Nikola Dobroslavić stressed that this is an excellent example of good use of the money made available to Croatia from European Union funds.

''The ship is largely financed by EU funds through a project conducted by Dubrovnik-Neretva County. This is the first firefighting boat in our county, and JVP Mljet (Mljet fire brigade) will be responsible for it, but of course it will be available to the whole of this southern area. Another firefighting vessel is coming to the City of Dubrovnik soon and this is a significant addition to the safety and the possibility of interventions being made at sea. This ship will be used for firefighting on boats, as well as in some other emergency situations,'' stated Dobroslavić, among other things.

Sveti Florijan is the first firefighter in Dubrovnik-Neretva County, otherwise Croatia's southernmost county, area acquired by the southern Dalmatian county as part of the scope of the European project AdriaMORE, which is otherwise one of the projects currently being implemented by the Interreg Croatia-Italy cross-border program.

The project activities of Dubrovnik-Neretva County are worth around 350,000 kuna, of which 85 percent are being co-financed with the very welcome funds of the European Regional Development Fund, and the remaining 15 percent are financed by the county's own funds.

A shipbuilding contract, worth about 950,000 kuna, was signed last September with Damor d.o.o., and, as previously mentioned, the new firefighting vessel will be taken care of by Mljet's fire brigade and by Mljet Municipality.

Dubrovnik-Neretva County organised the ceremony as part of the activities on this year's International Civil Protection Day, which was marked on March the 1st.

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Can Croatia improve its standards by putting in proper preventative fire protection measures in its buildings, alongside the obtaining of energy efficiency certificates? Fire Safe Europe thinks so.

The director of Fire Safe Europe warns that fire protection should be thought of preventively, not just after something has already started burning.

As Ana Blaskovic/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 15th of November, 2018, Juliette Albiac is the ''face'' of Fire Safe Europe, a lobby association of building material manufacturers, firefighters and firefighting experts, with the aim of increasing security standards when it comes to fire protection in buildings. After the utterly catastrophic fire that took place in the Grenfell skyscraper in London, which took 72 lives in 2017 because of the inadequate materials used in construction, the tragic theme has finally come to the forefront.

Since the Republic of Croatia also needs to incorporate fire protection regulation into its national legislation by the end of 2020, Fire Safe Europe points out that it is now an ideal opportunity to raise awareness of its importance in the energy renewal of buildings and the availability of European Union funds.

How much Europe is aware of the issues of fire protection?

The fire at the Grenfell Tower in London has inspired many countries in the rest of Europe to review their security procedures and documents, although some Eastern European countries have, already gone ahead and done that. We thought Britain was one of the leaders in standards of fire protection, so this tragedy came as a surprise to us. We knew there were problematic issues because the European regulations were not aligned, and the current testing models can't predict how facades will behave during a fire, but we'd never have said something like that would happen. It was a wake up call.

Was Grenfell a turning point?

First of all, it should be borne in mind that the regulations relating to fire protection are done at the jurisdiction of each member [state of the EU], just as they are with traffic safety. After Grenfell, several countries revised their regulations, but not all of them. A new law has come into force in France, while talks about properly defining tall buildings or skyscrapers are going on in Belgium, as evacuations in the event of fires are getting worse and longer.

Unlike airborne (aircraft) accidents that are spoken about in the media, about which much can be learned by analysing, this isn't the case with fires that take place in buildings. In Europe, about 4,000 people are killed per year, and about 200,000 people are injured. That's why the European Commission established the Fire Information Exchange Platform (FIEP) last year to allow member states to share the best experiences and their data.

What about Croatia?

Unlike Europe, which has had to learn from tragedy, Croatia has luckily learned another way, for example, after we conducted a scientific fire facade study in partnership with the University of Zagreb, the results have influenced a change of regulations to strengthen fire protection. We've compared the three types of façades with different materials that behave differently in a fire. It's been shown that due to the high proportion of flammable materials inside the building, the fire spreads quickly inside and outside of the building, and the speed the fire spread depends on the materials used on the outside of the building. It was a breakthrough where the importance of fire protection was really recognised; we conducted the experiment in 2014, and the regulation in Croatia was changed in 2015.

Otherwise, all eastern countries in Europe take more stringent mandatory measures than trends in Western Europe. Among them, Croatia and Bulgaria have adapted the energy efficiency regulations by prescriptive measures. Take, for example, the definition of tall buildings and skyscrapers; in eastern countries, the borders are lower than they are in Western Europe, and this is extremely important for fire protection. If a fire occurs, the time of evacuation from such buildings is longer. There is no single answer that is the best when it comes to fire protection, for example, it's not enough to just install water sprinklers, but it needs to be a complete approach.

However, everything comes down to money and construction costs. How much more, on average, expensive is it to incorporate a range of inflammable materials into a building?

It's not just a matter of money, the problem lies with insufficient education. Often people, and I'm thinking of building owners and of landlords, don't think about fire protection when building an energy-efficient building. At Fire Safe Europe, we're working to make sure [they know] that using inadequate materials or installing non-certified materials can increase the risk of fire. Talk to your architects and your designers, this isn't just a matter of money. Today's construction is fragmented and the responsibility is also ultimately fragmented. That's the problem. Just take the example of the fires in the middle of the tourist season in Split last year when the fires came down into the city and the citizens and tourists had to evacuate.

Soon, new changes will come into effect. What's that all about?

Croatia, as well as other EU members, will soon be adopting a new long-term energy-building renewal regulation pertaining to the Energy Performance Building Directive (EPBD), which was amended this year, which for the first time mentions fire protection in as many as two articles, in which it demands of a member state that when working to reduce energy consumption in buildings, they also take charge of fire safety. The new regulation has to be included in national legislation within two years, for which discussions have already begun in Croatia. It's important to emphasise that European Union funds are available to those who want to make their buildings more energy efficient, and make them safer in the event of a fire.

What's your key message?

Research shows that people often think of fires just after they hear that something is burning somewhere. In other words, fire protection is often not considered as preventive or during energy renewal, and unfortunately that's a fact. Croatia now has a fantastic opportunity to further improve the standards of fire protection within the energy renewal of its buildings. That's why it's important for people to think about fire protection every time they talk about energy efficiency. Imagine, there's no fire protection included at the time of obtaining an energy certificate, so we know how much energy is being consumed but we don't know how the building will behave in the fire. Personally, it's not clear to me how a building can be sustainable and at the same time be able to just burn to the ground.

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Click here for the original article/interview by Ana Blaskovic for Poslovni Dnevnik

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