Flood Rescue Using Boats

Le module FRUB de la Protection civile belge est capable d’effectuer des opérations de recherche et d’évacuation de personnes et d’animaux dans des zones inondées ou, encore, de fournir des biens de première nécessité aux victimes isolées lors d’importantes inondations.

 

hese last years, the Civil Protection created a FRUB module (Flood Rescue Using Boats) in order to be able to face the increase of climate change related risks, such as severe flooding. This module is capable of conducting search and evacuation operations for people and animals in flooded zones or of providing first necessity products to isolated victims in case of severe flooding. It is integrated into the SAR (Search and Rescue) cluster of the Civil Protection, specialised in search, assistance and rescue operations of people in difficulty.

The FRUB module of the Civil Protection already took part to several international large scale exercises  (CASCADE 2019 in Portugal last year, RIWATEREX in Spain in 2018, TRIPLEX in Norway in 2016, …). The European authorities will soon approve it according to the international quality standards and it will officially join the European Civil Protection Pool, formerly the Voluntary Pool, of the EU Civil Protection Mechanism.

About thirty trained specialists, especially in navigation and swift water techniques, make up this FRUB Module; they wear an appropriate protective equipment (suit, helmet ...) and have several boats at their disposal. It can be called up within twelve hours for a departure abroad during about ten days by road (Civil Protection trucks) and within a radius of 1,500 km. It has, among other things, a communication and susbsistence autonomy and can collaborate with similar modules from other countries.