As part of preparations for the new academic year, exercises of the Emergencies Ministry have been held on the premises of St. Petersburg Mining University. Why this time those were held at night?
Every year the university administration together with the Federal Fire Service of St. Petersburg organizes planned tactical exercises of the nearest fire and rescue unit. About a dozen special vehicles arrive, a smokescreen is put up, extras are invited, and dozens of firefighters, according to the voiced task, perform the required actions. They perform reconnaissance of the places of fire, evacuation of people if by the legend they did not have time to go outdoors, and then proceed to extinguish the simulated fire.
The purpose of such events is to improve the readiness of the rescue services as well as to check the primary actions of the school personnel during the emergency response at a place with a large number of people. The training is traditionally held in the first half of the day when the university has the largest number of students and teachers. The next similar manoeuvres will be held before the end of August.
However, the exercise organized this week solved a fundamentally different problem. The call from Mining University to Fire and Rescue Unit No. 18 came at 00:02, and 7 minutes later the car arrived at the place of the call.
At night the university is closed to the public, so at this time of day is working out how to save not people but the historic building. The main building of the oldest technical school in Russia, built in the early 19th century by the architect Andrei Voronikhin in the style of early Alexander Classicism, is included in the Unified State Register of Cultural Heritage. It represents unique value as a historical monument, the preservation of which is one of the state’s priority tasks.
“This was an unplanned exercise that only the university administration and the head of the Emergency Department knew about. EMERCOM staff must be well oriented on the ground, even in poor visibility conditions, and to make sure that in case of an emergency they are as ready as possible, training is necessary. Firefighters were called because they ‘noticed’ heavy smoke on the upper floors. They immediately began the operation to eliminate the emergency: ran hose lines on the fifth floor, connected them to the hydrants, checked the corridors and premises in search of the alleged victims,” said the head of the low voltage networks of the university Oleg Dobrynin.
At the end of the exercises, “debriefing” and additional training of the university staff took place. The firefighters’ actions were considered successful.
