The Court of Auditors, which recently conducted an audit on the existence of civilian shelters that can be used to protect the population in situations of armed conflict, found that they are few, unsanitary and have remained at the level of 1970 in terms of equipment.
Therefore, Bucharest and 6 counties have between 93 and 147 civil protection shelters, while 6 other counties have a number of shelters between 53 and 79.
There are counties with 5, 3 or only one shelter for protecting the population in case of war, the same report of the Court of Accounts shows. Bucharest and Ilfov County have the most civil protection shelters, 588 respectively, but only 1 in 3 shelters is operational, according to data presented in a report of the Court of Accounts.
Dolj County has 213 shelters, Galaţi has 185, Prahova has 183 shelters, Constanţa – 114, Bihor 96 and Braşov 93.
At the opposite pole are 7 counties that have less than 8 shelters for protecting civilians in case of armed conflict. In Caraş-Severin there are 8 such shelters, in Tulcea there are 6, in Dâmboviţa and Buzău 5 each, Vrancea and Giurgiu counties have 3 shelters each, while Neamţ county has only one shelter.
The Court of Auditors says that many shelters were found with serious deficiencies: lack of sealing gaskets on the access doors to the shelters, which no longer ensures the protection of people inside the shelters; damaged metal joinery (rusty, broken/blocked locking devices), due to increased humidity inside the basements of the buildings, malfunctions of rainwater systems or leaks in the block that led to flooding of the basements and implicitly the shelters; electrical installations completely or partially decommissioned, decommissioning of electrical panels, as well as their dismantling by people who had access to electrical shelters; their operation with improvisations and/or malfunctions; failure to implement, malfunction or take out of service of the filter-ventilation system; incomplete or totally/partially damaged filter-ventilation systems, being taken out of service due to the lack of electric motors to drive the system, incomplete overpressure valves, “wolf jump” type rescue exits have blocked access doors or show signs of wear, are clogged with waste or soil, rescue exit covers are clogged with asphalt.
The institution draws attention to the gaps in the legislation regarding the regulation of such a situation, given that the auditors found that the total number of civil protection shelters is unknown, and the authorities have not conducted an inventory of places where civilians can be sheltered in the event of war in recent years.
The audit conducted by the Court of Accounts on the situation of civil protection shelters took place last year and covered the period 2021-2023, with the auditors assessing the efficiency of the management of shelter activity in situations of armed conflict and seeking to see the situation of civil protection shelters that are functional and can be used in situations of armed conflict.
After collecting data from central and local public administration entities and from the academic environment, the Court of Accounts auditors found deficiencies in the measures taken by the authorities to protect the civilian population in the event of war. Legislation must be adapted to the current context.
“Sheltering, as a component of civil protection in Romania, is insufficiently regulated, and the existing legislation must be adapted to the current context, the auditors note. The risk of armed conflict associated with sheltering the population has not been defined and an authority with a main role for the activity of preparing the sheltering of the population in such exceptional situations has not been established. Currently, the total number of civil protection shelters and simple shelters that can be set up in such situations is not known, as most local public authorities have not inventoried the sheltering spaces,” are the conclusions of the Court of Accounts.
The auditors found that the regulations regarding the activity of sheltering the population in case of war and the equipment of most civil protection shelters and command posts remained at the level of the 1970s.
“Since there were no situations of armed conflict on the territory of Romania, the shelters were not used for the purpose for which they were built. Currently, many of them are unsanitary, impractical or transformed by the owners into warehouses, while others have undergone modifications, so that the respective spaces no longer comply with shelter regulations. In Romania, the capacity to shelter the population in case of air attack is 3.21% (611,922 people) in specially built shelters, respectively 5.19% (989,507 people), if we take into account other identified shelter spaces (metro spaces, parking lots, underground passages and galleries, tunnels, etc.), compared to the total resident population (19,053,815 people). Of the total 5072 civil protection shelters, public and private, 2543 are non-operational (50.14%). The shelter fund is old, 73% of the shelters, respectively 3711, were built before 1990”, the Court of Auditors report states.
Raed Arafat, Secretary of State in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Romania, stated that in 2024 the Inspectorate General for Emergency Situations (IGSU) inspected civil protection shelters, on which occasion 328 sanctions were given in the amount of over 390,000 lei, to which 2,408 warnings were added.
Arafat said that inside the shelters, pipes and other objects were installed that should not be there. Some shelters were found flooded, the electrical installations were degraded and the ventilation installations were not found to be functional. Many of the shelters were found to be in an advanced state of degradation overall. In addition to these, there are shelters that have not been completed by the builder.
Arafat explained that the responsibility for the shelters lies either with the local authorities, if they are public shelters, or, if they are in private buildings, with the owner/administrator of the building.
Arafat says that these places must be secured, populated with what is needed (blankets, beds, etc.) left unfinished. The IGSU official also believes that at a national level more than the 600,000 places reported could be found, the vast majority in the basements of some blocks of flats, but these need to be arranged. And above all, the increase in the number of places depends on funding.
However, the Court of Auditors says the fines have no effect.
“According to the audit report, ISU representatives noted, during the inspections carried out, that the application of fines for the deficiencies found does not constitute a sufficiently strong coercive instrument for real estate developers tasked with the construction of new shelters to fully comply with the legislation and to request, upon final acceptance of the work, the authorization for the construction of the civil protection shelter, as provided for in the technical documentation and in the initial approval”, are other conclusions of the audit regarding civil protection shelters.