Lisbon, Sept. 9, 2025 (Lusa) - The National Association of Professional Firefighters (ANBP) on Tuesday called for the compulsory use of drills in public transport and other equipment, one of the recommendations it made in its meeting with the mayor of Lisbon.

The ANBP requested the meeting with Carlos Moedas before what happened with the Glória funicular last Wednesday in Lisbon. Still, the deadly accident ended up dominating the agenda, with the firefighters emphasising prevention.

Firefighters should have "direct contact" with "everything important" in cities, so that drills can be carried out along with the technicians and companies that supervise the equipment.

"If there are these exercises, drills, visits, working with firefighters, the likelihood of a situation of this nature will be much lower," because firefighters, technicians and companies "are obliged to draw up a report, which will be studied, analysed," stressed Fernando Curto, president of the ANBP.

"It should be compulsory for this to happen," he emphasised, reporting that Carlos Moedas agreed, he thought it was legitimate to adopt this procedure in the future.

"The safety of the city of Lisbon and the country has to be the first obligation of the government," said the firefighter, noting that "there is a lack of legislation, there is a lack of a safety culture."

The mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas (PSD), did not make any statements at the end of the meeting.

The Glória funicular - where an accident on Wednesday caused 16 deaths and several injuries - "had no drills, there was nothing like that," said Fernando Curto, explaining that such exercises would require "a response and an analysis" by the technical companies and the fire brigade.

If it had been carried out, "maybe the attaching plate would have had to be dismantled, maybe the main cable would have had to be removed by the technicians, in other words, all of this requires much greater care," he pointed out.

Regarding the conclusions of the first, provisional, accident report, Fernando Curto, "trusting what the technicians say", agreed that "there should be redundancy, there should be a brake, there should be all that".

"If this equipment had been inspected, if there had been any situation, I'm sure the company's technicians would have detected something (...). Why not conduct these drills? Why not do a series of organisational tasks in this direction?" he asked, expressing his "indignation" at the criticism of the suspension of operations in Lisbon's other lifts and funiculars.

"We believe that this was the best course of action," he said, adding that the firefighters will take part in the interventions supervised by the technical companies responsible for the equipment.

"It's not enough to have good professionals, as we do, it's not enough to have good equipment, as we do, we have to have direct contact with the companies, to validate these spaces that are public and frequented by more people," he said, recognising that prevention "is failing at all levels", not only in the city of Lisbon, but throughout the country.

"Politicians can't turn their backs on prevention," he said, emphasising the recommendation for drills.

"When you make a proposal like this, [they say] that's a lot of money, and that doing a drill in a museum is complicated, because they're closed for two hours and you lose a lot of money. You can't think like that. You have to think about what you gain from carrying out these exercises and what you gain from the reports, with what needs to be corrected," he says.

"The city of Lisbon has grown, (...) it's grown in people, in visitors, in buildings, in everything, the metro, everything is growing, and what isn't growing is the responsibility for security and what has to do with the contact that the Lisbon Fire Brigade Regiment has to have with these institutions is not just to help," he added.

The problem isn't just the private sector, it's also the culture of the state itself, as demonstrated by the attempt a few years ago to hold a drill at parliament, which failed.

Drills should be part of security companies' emergency plans. Still, they should also be required by the public bodies that use them, which, he acknowledged, could be jeopardised by the outsourcing of services, such as the maintenance of the lifts and funiculars run by Carris.

Reviewing protocols and involving firefighters in prevention were the two main recommendations left by the ANBP to Carlos Moedas, from whom they demand a "political decision", which they extend to the government.

"We have to be fundamentalist when it comes to safety, and when people die, we have to be even more fundamentalist. And the politicians, the decision-makers, whether in Lisbon City Hall or in parliament, have to intervene in this way, which they don't," he says.

The Lisbon Fire Brigade Regiment is prepared for situations like the Glória funicular, and Fernando Curto has no doubts about this. "What's missing is regular inspections, exercises and drills in these companies, especially where there is a public, where there are people," he reiterated.

"We've done an excellent job, but we don't want to do this work, we want to do this work first, so that when these situations happen, people don't die," he appealed, recalling the example, without wishing to "alarm", of the four cruise ships, each with 5,000 people, docked in Lisbon every day.

"If something happens, what do we do? We have to be prepared," he said.

SBR/ADB // ADB.

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