The procedures and internal capacity of the Portimão Municipal Aerodrome were tested yesterday, in the early afternoon, in a full-scale exercise designed to assess the capacity to respond to emergency situations, as well as the interaction with external means of assistance.
44 operational and 22 vehicles participated in this test of the Internal Emergency Plan (PEI), which worked under the scenario of a hypothetical engine fire and emergency landing of a Dornier 228 aircraft on the runway of the Municipal Aerodrome of Portimão.
On board would be 20 occupants, two crew members and 18 passengers, having counted the relief operations with the participation of the Voluntary Fire Department of Portimão, GNR, PSP, Municipal Civil Protection Service, Portuguese Red Cross, Foreigners and Borders Service and Institute National Forensic Medicine.
In the end, those responsible for the participating entities were unanimous in considering the experience to be positive and in recognizing the importance of this type of exercises.
The Municipality of Portimão underlines, in a press release, that «the validation of the PEI is one of the requirements of the National Civil Aviation Institute for the transition to category 5 of the Municipal Aerodrome of Portimão», with the consequent implementation of the Basic Rescue Service and Fire Fighting, an essential condition for the operationalization of the Bragança/Vila Real/Viseu/Cascais/Portimão airline passenger transport, scheduled for next year.
For this purpose, a group of workers from the Fire Department of Portimão completed, last week, specialized training in fighting aircraft fires, which took place at the municipal aerodromes of Cascais and Portimão.
This training, supported by the Municipality of Portimão, took into account the reality of the municipality in terms of aeronautical activity, namely in the light of existing infrastructures, such as the Municipal Aerodrome and the heliport of the Hospital do Barlavento Algarvio, aiming to increase the level of knowledge of local firefighters in possible air accidents.
The training focused on essential themes for dealing with an accident of this nature, such as the use of vehicles and intervention equipment in combat, rescue and extrication in an aeronautical environment, aligning intervention procedures with the hazards that aircraft present.
The Municipality of Portimão also announces that it will "establish a protocol with the Voluntary Fire Brigade", as a way to guarantee this "basic service of rescue and firefighting" at the Municipal Aerodrome, a fact that implies a "specific investment in terms of adequate equipment for this type of intervention”, when the regular air connection between Bragança and Portimão is about to start.
Comments