Augusto Gomes Secondary School evacuated in an exercise aimed at raising awareness among the school community
Augusto Gomes Secondary School was this weekend, April 29th, the stage for a fire drill, an exercise that involved the Leixões Voluntary Firemen, the Civil Protection and the Municipal Police.
The exercise was accompanied by the town councillors of Education, António Correia Pinto, and of Civil Protection, Marta Pontes.
The fire started in the technical and management area. A first intervention was made by the internal teams of the school, using the available means, but without success.
The smoke inhalation causes a cardiorespiratory arrest to one of the elements of the first intervention team. The first aid team comes into action to assist the victim through Basic Life Support.
Around 1200 people, among students, teachers and assistants, were evacuated from all the buildings to the outside, more specifically to the playing field, where they are accounted for.
In the meantime, the external means of help arrived, taking responsibility for the operation.
This simulacrum appears in the scope of the awareness raising work that the Civil Protection of Matosinhos City Hall has been doing with all the school community in different areas, among which the evacuation rules, the use of first intervention equipment and the basic life support. In this phase, the school's internal response capacities were tested, adding the intervention of external rescue entities as complements and enhancing the interaction among the participants.
In Matosinhos, the awareness actions are aimed at the whole school community. A purpose outlined since 2007, in a global strategy within the scope of the Municipal Educational Project and the areas of protection and rescue, with the objective of making Matosinhos more resilient and integrating these activities in the strategy of the United Nations (UN) for Risk and Disaster Reduction. It should be recalled that Matosinhos is the first city in Portugal to be distinguished by the United Nations (UN) as a "Resilient Hub", within the scope of the campaign "Building Resilient Cities 2030".
Thus, it should be noted that the Municipality's intervention with the school community includes more than 2,200 awareness-raising actions, involving about 74,000 students and 9,000 teachers and non-teaching staff.
In the current school year 2022/23, 235 actions have already been developed on various topics associated with risks, raising awareness of 5,786 students and 706 teachers and non-teaching staff.