Storm exposes Lithuania’s lack of preparedness for major disruptions

More than a quarter of a million residents lost electricity, one person was killed and insurers estimate the damage at more than 3 million euros after what LRT described as the biggest storm in decades. A week later, some people still remain without power.

The Government has said that restoring electricity is the priority, with an assessment of who failed to do what to follow. The storm’s consequences have also raised questions about whether residents and the state would be prepared for an armed conflict.

The storm struck a week ago, and ESO, Lithuania’s electricity distribution operator, has been working to repair the damage and restore supplies. Rasa Miškinytė, who lives near the worst-hit town of Anykščiai, spent a week without a regular electricity supply.

Miškinytė said she had always prepared for such disruptions. Her home has solar power, water can be drawn from a well or borehole, and a stove is available if additional heating is needed.

“Why leave everything until the last moment and then put the burden on everyone else? So that everyone now has to take care of someone who cannot look after themselves? Not cannot, but does not want to. I do not understand this,” she said.

One apparent solution would be to move part of the electricity network underground. ESO estimates that this would require underground cables along 6,000 kilometres of network and cost half a billion euros. The operator says the consequences of natural disasters would then be less severe.

However, ESO chief executive Renaldas Radvila said underground cables would not solve the wider problem of society’s reliance on a single source of electricity.

“As a society, we are not prepared for such disruptions. We do not have generators and rely on a single source, and this is something that should be addressed,” Radvila said.

An example came from Kazlų Rūda municipality. An outpatient clinic, along with nearby institutions and residents, lost internet access, and its computers stopped working. Electronic health services and electronic prescriptions were therefore unavailable. Prescriptions were written by hand, and only medical services that did not require electricity could be provided.

Kazlų Rūda Mayor Mantas Varaška said ESO had offered generators, but questioned what 200 generators could achieve when 270,000 electricity users had been affected.

“Other municipalities refused to accept this assistance because it would have set people against one another and led to many theories about why some received generators and others did not,” Varaška said.

Civil protection experts have questioned why residents, particularly those living in more remote parts of Lithuania, had not prepared generators, water supplies and food reserves. They also questioned whether municipalities had been ready.

Public discussion has focused on the problems of moving electricity cables underground, rather than on how prepared Lithuania’s residents are for war. This raises the question of whether everyone would wait for the state to provide assistance if an armed conflict began.

“We need to change the attitude that the state will come and bring something. Every family must have its own defence plan and the necessary means,” said Laurynas Kasčiūnas, deputy chairman of the Seimas Committee on National Security and Defence.

Since the start of the open war in Ukraine, experts and the Government have repeatedly said that residents should be prepared to manage independently for two to three days. They have been advised to keep enough non-perishable food, ways to prepare it, water, medicines and additional energy sources.

Reports during the week following the storm described shortages of water, food and medicines in several municipalities, even before two to three days had passed since the disaster.