2.2.9 Poland Introduction Fourteen people representing the authorities and volunteer organisations responded to the questionnaire, and one person representing the authorities participated in an interview. The quotations in this report are summarised paraphrases from this interview. Of the volunteers that responded to the questionnaire, eight are volunteer or contract fire brigades, one represents a search and rescue organisation and two represent the Association of the Volunteer Fire Brigades of the Republic of Poland (ZOSP RP). State, regional and municipal levels are all represented, the fewest (four) representatives were from the regional level. The authorities are evenly split among the three levels: two of them represent the rescue/emergency services and one represents the spatial planning department. While the actual numbers regarding the size of the respondents’ organisations were not available to this survey, by analysing the statistical dispersion of the replies we can conclude that the volunteers’ organisations are generally relatively small. Typically they have approximately twenty or more members, except for the ZOSP RP, which has a quarter of a million members.
The prevalence of cooperation and contracts The volunteers generally consider their cooperation as being good, with six saying good or very good, four being neutral and only one saying bad. All of the volunteer organisations have contracts with the rescue and emergency services. About half of them also have contracts with the police and/ or some risk management authority. Only two volunteer organisations are not included in the authorities’ contingency plans for major disasters. All of the volunteers cooperate with the rescue/emergency services and municipalities. A few cooperate with the police, and two respondents replied they cooperate with a risk management authority. All of the authorities cooperate with volunteer fire brigades. The Red Cross, the Home Guard and some other organisations each gave two answers, and one of the authorities cooperates with the Air Rescue. The other organisations are mostly rescue services and scouting organisations, along with the Polish Medical Mission, Caritas Poland and the Polish Humanitarian Action. 132
