Local government activities and responsibilities during rescue and recovery

Abstract

Due to the coronavirus pandemic and the fight against it, as well as the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war in the neighborhood, more and more citizens are concerned with disaster management these days [1]. This concern with disaster management was further strengthened by the flood protection measures covering the entire Hungarian section of the Danube in the fall of 2024. In order to be able to protect more effectively against disasters, according to the National Security Strategy, the primacy of prevention and the effectiveness of interventions must be ensured [2], and changes in legislation must be taken into account. In the elimination of the consequences of disasters, a fundamental goal has been to ensure proportionality between the damage site, or its severity and extent, and the deployed intervention forces, which is primarily for reasons of operational expediency and economy [3]. Among the intervention forces is the local government, which sometimes directs the defense or participates in the defense, on the one hand as an additional organization participating in the performance of defense and security tasks, and on the other hand as a participant to be involved in the defense against disasters.