Danish National Rescue Preparedness

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The Danish National Rescue Preparedness (Danish: Det samlede Redningsberedskab or simply Redningsberedskabet) is the umbrella term for the Danish nationwide rescue service. It consists of the National Rescue Preparedness Corps (Beredskabskorpset or Det statslige redningsberedskab), which is managed by the Danish Emergency Management Agency (DEMA) and Municipality Rescue Preparedness (Det kommunale redningsberedskab) managed by a municipality preparedness commission (Beredskabskommission) in each municipality. DEMA is an advising and guiding authority for these. The organization is a three level structure.

The Municipality Rescue Preparedness is by far the largest part in this organization. All 270 municipalities in Denmark are required by law to have a rescue preparedness service. In many municipalities they don’t use the name "rescue preparedness", but rather Fire Service (Brandvæsen). This can be misleading as the fire service originally merged with the civil defence to form the rescue preparedness service, as per the Danish Preparedness Act (Beredskabsloven) of January 1, 1993.

About 2/3 of all municipality uses the private company Falck for this service, including fire fighting and emergencies, which has created a near synonymous of the expression "Falck" with emergency help in Denmark. However it is still the municipality that is directly responsible for this service.

[edit] Structure

Level I, is the municipality rescue service, here in included the daily fire, rescue and environmental services. Response time must be 10-15 minutes. On level one neighbouring municipality can offer assistance if need be.

Level II, consist of nine municipality support points and six governmental support points, containing special material, which can be available within one hour. In case of an immediate emergency with a toxic substance, a 30 minutes response time is available from about 45 municipalities and six governmental emergency management centres.

Level III, is the six governmental emergency management centres with a nationwide response time of about 2 hours in very long-lasting and manpower demanding rescue-, environmental- and fire operations.

[edit] Municipality support points

The nine municipality support points (Støttepunkter) for Level II emergencies contains material most useful for the municipalities they serve. They are manned by either volunteers or paid personnel. They are located in;

Beredskabscenter Aalborg (Aalborg)
Århus Brandvæsen (Århus)
Beredskabet (Esbjerg)
Fredericia Brandvæsen (Fredericia)
Odense Brandvæsen (Odense)
Kalundborg Brand & Redning (Kalundborg)
Beredskabsforvaltningen (Fredensborg-Humlebæk)
Falster Redningsberedskab (Nykøbing Falster)
Greve Redningsberedskab (Greve)

[edit] Emergency Management Centres

The six Emergency Management Centres are located on the same place as the six governmental support points. The support point has roughly the same material as the nine municipality support points, while the six Emergency Management Centres has material needed for Level III emergencies. They are part of National Rescue Preparedness Corps.