An inflamed pyrotechnic which gets a few football fans injured and starts a fire, special police forces involvement and evacuation of spectators from building were parts of a full-scale emergency exercises test held at the Krestovsky stadium on April 12. The test showed that disaster responders and the fire equipment of the stadium are ready to host here games of the FIFA Confederations Cup 2017.
The legend of the emergency test was simple and rather realistic:
— one of fans in a fan sector set fire to a piece of pyrotechnic;
— some people in a neighboring sector are getting injured wih a few left on their seats or even floor and all others leaving the building on their own;
—firefighters are coming into the sector with those affected to take them out;
— at the same monent, special police forces are stepping into the sector with raging fans to block them and take them out the building.
These first stages are shown in the first face video below:
Other stages included:
— when all the fans including injured ones were taken from their seats into corridors, units of automatic fire equipment were brought into operation to handle fire which has not been extinguished by portable extinguishers;
— the evacuated fans were accepted by first medical aid forces and psychology service workers to get first aid;
— a few persons were evacuated from higher tiers of the building with the help of special equipment;
— firefighter machines went closer to the building to down fire from outside;
— two emergency helicopters landed in front of the stadium to evacuate two heavily injured fans.
Many volunteers had face and body paint on to imitate injuries to help the «accident» look more realistic.
As officials said to the press after the emergency test had been finished, the exercises showed that all the emergency services were well ready to respond to disasters should they happen.
In February and March, the Krestovsky stadium (also known as Zenit Arena and Gazprom arena) was tested by a few events.
The first official football game will be played here on April 22 when FC Zenit St. Petersburg will host their counterparts from FC Ural within the Russian Football Premier League’s Championship.
Zenit will play two more games here before the start of the FIFA Confederations Cup 2017 which seems to be a rather heavy test for the stadium as the grass of the camp is not still ready. It’s obviously that FC Zenit players will have to conduct their matches on a grass — plot of poor quality. What kind of grass will be grown up for the Cup, still remains to be seen.
So far construction works are still in full swing at the stadium.
Read our post about how to get to the Saint Petersburg Stadium (Krestovsky stadium).