Next year, Belgium’s National Crisis Centre is launching a campaign about how to prepare for a crisis situation. The aim is to make Belgians more resilient. ‘We no longer live in the peace we hoped for. There are geopolitical tensions and the number of natural disasters and cyber-attacks is increasing,’ says Belgian Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden (Flemish Christian democrat/CD&V).
Belgian crisis centre to launch campaign: 'We are not living the peace we had hoped for' says interior minister
Colin Clapson
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‘We need to step up a gear. We have had little crisis culture in Belgium over the past decades and we want to start communicating,’ Ms Verlinden told VRT Radio.
Drawing up an emergency plan
The large-scale campaign will include information on how to take shelter, evacuate, and create your own emergency plan. ‘For example, it will be about listing the people you need to notify, knowing which emergency numbers to have on you and looking at whether it makes sense to have an emergency battery in the house’ the minister explained. ‘Experience shows that as individuals we can do a few things to ensure we are well prepared.’
‘We see a lot of frightening things happening around us. Even in our own country, we have already faced disasters, floods and cyber-attacks. We all need to prepare to defend ourselves as best we can in the face of such incidents.’
Avoiding panic
In an ominous speech last week, NATO chief and Dutchman Mark Rutte called on people ‘to prepare ourselves mentally for war’. Last week the Dutch were advised to have cash on hand after the Dutch defence minister made an appeal to prepare for all possible war scenarios.
Minister Verlinden does not want to go that far. She does not speak about preparing for war. ‘We must avoid creating panic. The main message we want to give is that people can also make preparations themselves to ensure that in the case of emergency they can cope for a few hours. In that way, the emergency and security services can focus on the most vulnerable people.’
The crisis centre will roll out the campaign over the next year. This will happen via associations, schools, companies and city and municipal authorities.