“Today, a state of emergency will be declared throughout the Kazlų Rūda municipality territory. More details will be announced in the afternoon,” M. Varaška announced on his “Facebook” page.
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He also outlined the main reasons and objectives for this decision:
1. Most of the municipality’s public parks/recreational areas are not yet safe/checked for trees/branches/electrical leaks. Please refrain from visiting these places until further notice. We plan to fix/check them by Wednesday-Thursday.
2. There are increasing reports from residents about shortages of water/food. The municipality will soon announce where people should turn for water/food/health needs if they are in more remote homesteads/settlements.
3. Institutions will exchange resources (generators, towers, lifts, etc.) according to current needs. In an emergency situation, they will be able to do this without temporary contracts, approvals, etc.
4. Residents will continue to be able to remove dangerous/fallen trees on their plots without a written municipal permit, by taking photos/videos of such trees. This temporary permit will be valid until September 10.
5. The municipality, having declared an emergency, will be able to receive military and police assistance for cleaning territories, delivering food, water, and medical supplies to more distant/hard-to-reach settlements.
6. Residents are still allowed to voluntarily clean common city/town areas and take wood/branches except in state forest territories. Where there is state or private forest, it can be checked on regia.lt or geoportal websites.
Record number of calls
The Emergency Call Center (ECC) received 33,561 calls over the past weekend when the storm hit Lithuania.
On Monday, the ECC reported that after a record Saturday, when the number 112 was called 24,427 times, the call volume on Sunday remained unusually high – with another 9,134 calls received.
On Saturday, the ECC experienced an unprecedented load – 24,427 calls in one day, almost five times more than a typical weekend day.
This is the highest number of calls received in one day in the entire history of the ECC. The call volume rapidly increased from 2 p.m., with the highest peak recorded between 4 and 6 p.m.
Huge damage
The storm with heavy rain that raged across Lithuania last Saturday caused damage in all regions of the country. According to “Lietuvos draudimas” data, more than 1,700 claims were registered by Monday morning, with total damages exceeding 1 million euros.
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The company predicts that as residents continue to report storm damage to their property, the total damage amount will increase and may reach 3 million euros.
“Considering the high rate of damage claim registrations and the overall impact on residents’ property, this is undoubtedly the biggest storm of the year. Damage caused by strong winds to buildings and other property dominates, with many reports of damage caused by trees that could not withstand wind gusts, as well as flooding from precipitation and other types of rain damage,” said Mantas Norkus, head of the customer service center at “Lietuvos draudimas,” in a statement.
According to him, the total damage amount registered for cars due to broken trees and branches has already exceeded 100,000 euros.
“We received damage claims related to storm effects on property and vehicles from all 60 municipalities in the country. The most affected were the cities and districts of Kaunas and Vilnius, as well as the municipalities of Panevėžys, Kaišiadorys, Kėdainiai, Utena, and Klaipėda districts,” said M. Norkus.
He noted that some residents still cannot report damage because some regions of the country were left without electricity during the storm, and mobile network disruptions were also recorded. Therefore, the three working days deadline for damage registration does not apply; it can be reported later.
Hundreds of thousands without electricity
According to the head of the Energy Distribution Operator (ESO), Renaldas Radvila, the storm that swept across Lithuania over the weekend was extraordinary, more than a third more intense than two years ago – its scale hinders faster removal of storm consequences.
“The most affected districts are Utena, Kaunas, Vilnius, and Panevėžys. In these areas, the restoration of electricity supply to the last customers may take until August 29, that is, until Saturday,” said R. Radvila.
As BNS reported, about 129,000 users still had disrupted electricity supply on Monday morning.
According to ESO data, the maximum number of outages was recorded on Saturday evening, when 268,000 users were without electricity. According to meteorologists, Saturday’s storm was the strongest this summer.
According to R. Radvila, after the summer storm of 2024, ESO purchased 200 additional electric generators, of which 183 have been delivered to 16 municipalities so far.
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