Katri Raik, Mayor of Narva, which lies on the eastern border, said she only learned about what had happened overnight, including a drone hitting and damaging a chimney at the nearby Auvere power station, via the media in the morning.

The incident once again showed that local governments need information from the state quicker.

"The mayor lives on the front line; the director general of the Internal Security Service and the director general of the Rescue Board cannot come here. Inevitably, and especially in Narva, questions get directed at the mayor, who represents everything from Estonia. Naturally, it is reasonable to involve us, no matter who the mayor is. But from a situation like this, which still ended well, we must learn in order to be prepared for even more complicated situations, should they arise," Raik said.

"Right now it is clear that the risk area is not only Narva, but all of Ida-Viru and Lääne-Viru counties. The war has reached our homes, however sad that is to admit. The idea of the crisis committee is to support one another and discuss what we can do in this situation and how we look to the future. Based on the news I have read this morning and the assessments currently given by the relevant authorities, this is our new normal," Raik went on.

Raik convened a city government crisis committee in the aftermath of the Auvere incident, thought to have been caused by a stray Ukrainian drone meant for the mass attack on the port of Ust-Luga and the Leningrad oblast which Ukraine conducted overnight Tuesday to Wednesday.

Local residents heard NATO jets scrambling

Other residents of Narva related their experiences of the recent incident.

Narva-based journalist Jevgenia Parv said acquaintances in Ukraine had warned her in recent days about the possibility of drones, adding she did not take the messages seriously.

"They wrote to me saying, please be attentive, because drones may start flying over your area. Please take care of yourselves, stock up so that you have bottles of water and so on. I laughed a little and reassured them. I thought it might be related to that information about the 'Narva People's Republic' LINK that has been circulating," Parv said.

Ida-Viru County residents also had their sleep disturbed by NATO jets in Italian air force service scrambled from Ämari Air Base, west of Tallinn.

"In the morning I heard strange sounds that you don't usually hear in the morning. I let the dog out, and somehow there was a very strange feeling," recalled Kaire Viil, who lives in Kohtla-Järve, around 50 kilometers west of Auvere.

Auvere itself only lies around 3 kilometers from the Russian border. The strike, at just before 3.45 a.m. Wednesday, damaged one of the power station's chimneys, but did not take electricity offline or cause damage to the power infrastructure.

The threat notification system's operation in the wake of the drone overflights has come in for criticism for not being clear or timely enough.

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