Bucharest mayor wants to test if local authorities are ready for winter

Bucharest mayor Gabriela Firea wants to make sure that the authorities are ready for winter, and plans to test their reactions through several simulations and exercises to be organized in the coming period. “We’ll organize trainings, exercises, and field simulations in the coming period, to see how fast institutions and people react,” Firea said, reports local Mediafax. She believes that the local authorities are currently 75% ready to intervene in case of snowfall. Almost 590 snow removal machines, and around 3,000 employees of the sanitation companies will intervene in all of Bucharest’s districts in case of snow. Moreover, over 34,000 tons of non-skid materials are also prepared. The mayor also wants to check if the number of snow removal machines registered on paper is the same with the one on the field. "For the first time, we’ll check if the sanitation machines are both in reality and on paper, and I requested that all machines have the logo of the capital or the district where they will intervene, and that of the company they belong to. In previous years, the same machines that were supposed to clear the snow in Bucharest were also working outside Bucharest, where they had no jurisdiction, and we were wondering why the snow removal was not made at high quality standards," Firea said. "This year, I want snow removal operations in Bucharest to be exemplary," she told the representatives of the public authorities and sanitation companies in charge of this process. Mayor: Bucharest’s Arch of Triumph to be ready for December 1 parade Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com