„It (the Vilnius evacuation plan – ELTA) has been finalised; in this case, the coordination with the government authorities is finalised. We do not have a national evacuation plan, which is also being prepared. The work is intensive,“ Benkunskas told reporters on Tuesday.
„We are not late for anything, we have not had to evacuate, and I am sure we will not have to evacuate, but the work that has been done is seriously responsible and will be put in a drawer in the hope that it will never be needed,“ he added, underlining that the capital's municipality was one of the first to carry out this work on civil protection.
According to Benkunskas, the evacuation plan will consist of two parts.
„What is public will certainly be presented, and what is not public will go into a secret safe,“ he noted.
The Mayor also pointed out that the necessary infrastructure capacity works continue to ensure the proper evacuation of the city's population in case of danger. However, he stressed that these changes are not only necessary for evacuation.
„These works are ongoing and multifunctional. There is no single work just for evacuation, understanding that the main basis for evacuation of any city, especially Vilnius, will be evacuation by road, rail, etc. We have places where we need to do certain work, and the Ministry of Transport and Communications and Via Lietuva have to do certain work because these are also roads of national importance,“ the politician said.
„We are doing certain things to improve the city's capacity regarding all the congestion issues,“ the Mayor concluded.
At the beginning of the month, after meetings with the relevant authorities at the Ministry of Defence (KAM), the Mayor said that the main evacuation plan for the capital is by road and rail. In contrast, evacuation on the Neris River is considered a supplementary measure.
He also pointed out that there are five infrastructure management projects in Vilnius which would „unclog the bottlenecks“ and increase traffic capacity in the city – for example, on Mykolas Lietuvis and Šiaurinė streets. Among the smaller projects, the Mayor mentioned the exit to the A1 motorway near Gariūnai, owned by the state road manager Via Lietuva, which is a bottleneck.