Western Romania: Timișoara City Hall launches program to rehabilitate civil protection shelters
Timișoara City Hall, in western Romania, has launched a program for the rehabilitation and arrangement of public civil protection shelters. The measure is intended to increase the safety level of the population in emergencies.
The municipality has 89 civil shelters on record. These are mainly located in apartment buildings constructed during the communist period, with a total capacity of over 12,000 people. Of these, 48 are already registered in the land registry and included in the modernization program, according to G4Media.
The first stage of the rehabilitation project involves the technical assessment of the spaces. Authorities warn that many of these spaces are currently non-functional. They are either blocked by stored objects or modified without authorization through partitioning or interventions on installations.
To allow specialists access and the start of works, homeowners’ associations are required to clear the shelters by May 15, 2026. If unauthorized constructions have been made inside these spaces, such as storage units, walls, or other partitions, they must be removed by the residents.
If these obligations are not met, the City Hall will intervene to restore the shelters to their original form, in accordance with the legislation in force.
After the rehabilitation works are completed, the civil protection shelters may continue to be used by residents, under the conditions established by law.
Last year, a report published by the Court of Accounts revealed that civil shelters, which are to be used to protect people in the event of armed conflict, are few, unsanitary, and largely obsolete in terms of equipment at the national level.
Moreover, the population sheltering capacity in case of an air attack is 3.21% (611,922 people) in specially built shelters, and 5.19% (989,507 people) when considering other identified sheltering spaces. Out of a total of 5,072 civil protection shelters, both public and private, 2,543 are non-operational (50.14%). Around 73% of the shelters were built before 1990.
(Photo source: Vsevolod Chuvanov|Dreamstime.com)
