Targeted focus on the safety of the population

Targeted focus on public safety: Eastern Thuringia control center network meets in Gera to exchange ideas

Today, Wednesday (20.04.), representatives of the East Thuringia control center network met at the Gera Fire and Disaster Control Office. The main aim of the meeting was to discuss current structures and working methods as well as future cooperation between the two regional control centers in Gera and Jena. In addition to the two aforementioned cities, the districts of Greiz, Altenburger Land, Saalfeld-Rudolstadt, Saale-Orla and Saale-Holzland were also well represented.

The East Thuringia control center network is known to be a pioneer in the state-wide control center structure reform. With the successful takeover of tasks by the Jena control center for the district of Saalfeld-Rudolstadt, a further milestone in the future East Thuringian control center structure has been reached. The Saale-Orla district had previously been integrated into the Gera control center. The responsible department head of the city of Jena, Benjamin Koppe (CDU), is satisfied:

"Despite all the initial difficulties in the course of taking over the Saalfeld control centre, the integration process is now almost complete in structural and organizational terms. The digital radio system has been fully migrated, the call-out regulations with resource-related alerting and the duty system have been repeatedly adapted."

With the help of funding from the Free State, the East Thuringia control center network with both locations in Jena and Gera is in a robust position and an incentive for all other regional authorities to make the control center structure in the entire Free State more future-proof and economical, according to the Jena department head.

The next step in the control center structure reform, in order to be prepared for current and future challenges, will be the establishment of a teaching and training control center. The teaching and training control center, which will also serve as a test platform and redundancy location for the whole of Thuringia, will be set up as a branch of the state fire department and disaster control school in Gera. Gera's Mayor and Head of Finance, Security and Citizen Services, Kurt Dannenberg (CDU), is delighted with the decision made by the Free State:

"Together with the city council, we want to take the opportunity to build a modern emergency response center similar to the one in Jena around the Free State's training and education control center and our regional control center in Gera"

The emergency response center is a long-term project with various synergy effects. In addition to greater safety, it will also lead to budgetary relief.

A planning office is currently conducting a feasibility study to determine, among other things, whether the site at Elsterdamm 39 would be a suitable location for the emergency response center.

The East Thuringia control center network is a successful model because the two regional control centers in Gera and Jena currently coordinate the ground-based rescue service as well as fire and assistance operations in the five districts of East Thuringia and the cities of Gera, Jena and Weimar for more than 700,000 citizens with the highest level of safety and in close coordination with each other. Inter-municipal cooperation is therefore a key component of the East Thuringian security architecture. At the end of the day, it was clear to the participants of the conference that the safety of the people has the highest priority in the joint cooperation. Accordingly, it will also be necessary to regularly review and - where necessary - adapt their own procedures and structures in the future.