Ostrava - The safest summer camps for kids are in Moravian Silesian and Olomouc regions. Firemen in these regions have GPS localities of all the summer camps in the region and can contact on their organizers any time there is a need.
Thanks to this, organizers are able to get information about upcoming calamities as windstorm, flood, or rainstorm.
In the rest of the country firemen and other rescue services could have trouble finding the summer camps, as they have only partial information about their location.
One million in summer camps
Firemen and hygiene authorities estimate there are roughly one million children attending a summer camp between July and August. Should the wheather turn difficult, it may be tough for the rescue servicesto help them.
Next year, the situation may be entirely different, though. A new system is being tested by firemen in central and northern Moravia, and their colleagues from the rest of the country are to join them soon.
Happy end but...
How tough it is to help kids who are in danger shows a story from the the Klatovy region, south-west of Prague.
Local firemen were trying to find a camp which was in a remote area. They wanted to help a little girl trapped under a rotten tree that had fallen on her tent.
They were lost in the woods and had walk the last few kilometers to the camp on foot, as they didn't know how to get to the camp through the woods in a car.
Small camps hard to be found
"We do have some information about the summer camps in our region but often we miss accurate information on their localization, especially for the small-size camps," explained Alena Marešová, spokeswoman of the Plzeň region's firemen.
In the case of flood or a hurricane, firemen would not be even able to warn the campers. The camp organizers should watch weather forcast and be in touch with a mayor of the closest municipality, or hope that they will hear the warning firemen´s siren.
Global database
"The situation is to improve next year. Together with hygiene authorities, we are working on a database of all children summer camps, school trips or ski training schools in the country," explained Ivana Svitáková, spokeswoman of the General Directorate of the Fire Rescue Service.
The database will work in the same way as the local system in Moravia where hygiene service department and firemen have GPS coordinates of all camps that have more than thirty children.
In the Moravian-Silesian region only there are 95 summer camps attended in total by 100,000 children.
