Crisis management in the Republic of Croatia is a continoues process which, as in the other developed democratic countires, consists of four phases: prevention, alertness, reaction and recovery. Each phase is equally important and indispensable for the quality and comperhensive crisis management process. The aim of this work is to describe the crisis in the sphere of state security, to understand the concept of crisis through its ways of occurence, causes, course and consequences, to distinguish between crisis and similar terms, to present crisis management system by stages and to describe functioning of the protection and rescue system in the Republic of Croatia through the operation of system components and through a case study of the flood in Vukovar-srijem county in 2014. The protection and rescue system in the Republic of Croatia is haeded by the National protection and rescue directorate which carries the jobs of giving direction, management and coordination of protection and rescue components during the unwanted situations. The activities of the amenable institucion, as well as its contituents and other participants, is presented in the work through the legitimate frame of their affairs and thorugh the case study where the activities of the local, regional and state levels are cronologically described. Based on the literature, in the final part are presented recommendations for improving the protection and rescue system as a whole in the terms of greater involvment of volunteer participants, education of them and citizens and better planning and preparedness.