Rugāji administration head: 'Rather bad feeling' after drone downing, but no panic
A drone was shot down overnight in Balvi Municipality, Latvia; Sandra Kapteine, head of the Rugāji association administration, says the incident leaves an unpleasant feeling, residents are not panicking, and upcoming celebrations in Aglona cause concern.
Sandra Kapteine, head of the Rugāji association administration, said the downing of a drone over Balvi Municipality during the night left a rather unpleasant feeling, even though the incident ended successfully. She made the comment to Delfi.
Kapteine noted that Rugāji parish is in a border area, and residents have repeatedly received notifications about drone threats. People have also become accustomed to training flights. In her view, warnings will probably be perceived differently after what happened overnight. There is no panic among residents, she said, but she herself is more anxious about the upcoming celebrations in Aglona, which local residents plan to attend. She expressed hope that everything will be fine.
The municipality has an approximate idea where debris from the downed drone could have fallen – near Lake Boževa. Emergency services are still working at the scene. No people or property were harmed, and the debris most likely landed in a forested area.
Residents were alerted through cell broadcast messages, but Kapteine noted that these alerts still do not reach everyone equally. During her morning conversations with residents, she found that some people received both the warning and its cancellation, while others received only one of the messages.
Balvi Municipality has previously held civil protection commission trainings on how to act in the event of a drone threat, and the issue has been discussed with parish workers and at public meetings. Still, the lack of shelters remains a major problem in Rugāji and other rural areas. There are no officially recognized shelters in the Rugāji association, which consists of four parishes. Residents can only use home basements and follow the safety measures listed in warnings. Shelter availability is better in Balvi town, but distances in the rural area are large. The farthest parish, Krišjāņi, is about 40 kilometres away, and Kapteine questioned whether residents would go there even if a shelter existed in Rugāji.
