The People of Banja Luka Build Safer Community

The citizens of Banja Luka prefer not to remember the devastating floods in 2014, when heavy rainfall threatened the lives of residents and caused enormous material damage in this city. The water overflowed from the River Vrbas and its banks and spread over the whole city and flooded the houses and roads, while many landslides were triggered in hillside settlements.

Many vulnerable residents waited for days for assistance to reach them. Having learned from experience, the people of Banja Luka are making great efforts to strengthen the resilience of their community through disaster risk reduction (DRR) so that the same scenario does not happen again.

“The flood hazard is most intense in rainy May. The events related to that month, but also to 2014, warned that special attention should be paid to the development of the Vrbas riverbed”, said Dragoljub Vukajlović from the Civil Protection Banja Luka.

Representatives of the services which are important for the protection and rescue of people, from the sectors of education, social and child protection, health and agriculture, are addressing  the key DRR priorities on a daily basis, through the DRR platform Banja Luka established as part of the Joint DRR Program.

Mr. Vukajlović points out that the DRR Programme has shown that risk management is a complex process, requiring coordination and cooperation of all the city and state services and residents.

“If we look at the River Vrbas, which flows through the City of Banja Luka, it is impossible to manage the flood risk only at the level of the city, but rather, such measures must be taken in the entire basin”, Mr. Vukajlović explained.

Representatives of the city's protection and rescue services in Banja Luka successfully analyzed, through the DRR Programme, the risks that threaten their community, after which they created action plans for emergency situations and hazard and risk maps.

Mr. Vukajlović explains that they analyzed the level of vulnerability of all residents, the equipment available to institutions and organizations and the forces of the system, and how well-trained are rescue teams and all other segments that are necessary for reducing the risks of natural and other disasters.

“Through constant activities of the Civil Protection Division and the Professional Territorial Fire Fighting and Rescue Unit, a disaster response training is continuously provided to the system's forces as well as to citizens, which certainly increases the resilience of the community”, Mr. Vukajlović added.

As an example of good practice, teachers and students in nearly 60 schools in Banja Luka have strengthened protection in emergency situations in order to reduce disaster risks by improving the school DRR plans, evacuation drills and regular training on what should be done in response to a disaster, he says.

Healthcare workers from Banja Luka participated in important training on the “Minimum Initial Service Package (MISP) for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Gender-Based Violence in Crisis Situations”.

The participants are trained in the best way to prevent and reduce unwanted consequences and risks to sexual and reproductive health of the population. One of the participants was doctor Slađana Šiljak from the Public Health Institute of the Republika Srpska, who became a MISP trainer.

Dr. Šiljak explains that the MISP methodology increases the community's preparedness for prevention and early response towards reducing risks to the health of pregnant women, mothers, survivors of gender-based violence as well as young people who need counseling on sexual and reproductive health protection.

“We should keep in mind that we are all potentially sensitive, depending on the health resources and risks in certain situations. Early identification of health risks provides a timely response by the professional services and enables better sustainability of the local community in crisis situations”, said dr. Šiljak.

In order to maintain the accessibility of sexual and reproductive health services in times of crisis, support from all community members is necessary, she emphasized.

“Continuous collaboration between the health and non-health sectors strengthens the preparedness for an adequate response in the event of a crisis and prevention of health risks immediately before and during the first 48 hours after the onset of a crisis situation”, dr. Šiljak said.

Despite numerous training sessions and adopted DRR strategies, the message of the people in Banja Luka is that the only way to achieve sustainability of the DRR Programme is continuous and joint work towards strengthening the communities.

 “Since the hazards of natural and other disasters are becoming more frequent, it is very important that the local communities constantly deal with the issues aimed at reducing the risks of natural and other disasters”, Mr. Vukajlović from the Civil Protection Banja Luka said in the end.

The City of Banja Luka is one of the ten partner local communities of the Joint Swiss-UN Programme “Disaster Risk Reduction for Sustainable Development in Bosnia and Herzegovina”. The main goal of the Programme is to support local governments in BiH in improving their institutional capacities for disaster risk reduction, frameworks, public services and partnerships. The Programme supports citizens, especially the most vulnerable groups, and high-risk local communities in BiH in order to prepare for and adapt to the disaster risks as well as to ensure that the population in the areas exposed to risks is less vulnerable to the social and economic consequences of disasters and climate change.