Nuno Gonçalves heard “a big bang” around 1:00 p.m. Owner of an equestrian center near the facilities From the Faculty of Science and Technology (FCT) of the Universidade Nova, in Monte da Caparica, in Almada, Nuno went to the scene as soon as he heard the explosion, together with a worker from a nearby construction site. He was one of the first people to arrive at the Omnidea building and says he found the employee lying on the road, still showing signs of life. The emergency services arrived a few minutes later, but it was too late. Still no one can explain what went wrong.

Although the perimeter of the facilities Since the FCT is located in this open area, delimited by a fence, there is a space (next to the riding arena) where no physical barrier can be seen. After a walk of no more than 50 meters along a dirt road, it is possible to get very close to the place where everything happened.

In a large space, with a parking lot next to it, there is a building (Ydreams) where two companies operate: A2it and Omnidea, the latter dedicated to the aerospace area. This is a Portuguese company that develops special aerotechnology and set up shop on the Universidade Nova campus about three years ago.

A young mechanical engineer performed gas tests on a hot day

The explosion occurred not in the main building, but in a container installed a few metres from Omnidea and used by the most specialized workers to carry out pressure tests with various gases and chemicals, according to the Observer on site. Something went wrong this morning, but no one knows exactly what.

The explosion, heard several hundred metres away, killed the Omnidea employee, a mechanical engineer who had joined the company nearly three years ago, the Observer learned, and who was performing the tests on a very hot dayThe 25-year-old was outside the container, said Sérgio (who did not want to give his last name) and Nuno Gonçalves.

When the two men arrived at the scene, the young man who ended up dying still had a pulse, which ended up disappearing before the INEM team arrived. “When we arrived, people from the offices were already there, and the man was lying in the middle of the road, with a very large wound on his back. He was not inside the container, because it was completely destroyed,” says Nuno Gonçalves, adding that the young man was “spat on the road.”

First aid, the witness says, was provided by a worker from the Ydreams building and Includes resuscitation maneuvers.including the use of “mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.” Nuno Gonçalves says it took 15 minutes for the INEM team to arrive. “When they arrived, he no longer had a pulse,” says Sérgio, who helped the Ydreams employee who provided the young man with first aid. The middle-aged man says that, even before INEM arrived, the young man “had a pulse,” albeit an irregular one. “When I was holding him, I noticed that he had a pulse, which was going up quickly and then starting to go down,” says Sérgio.

When the Observer approached the scene, at around 3.30 pm, the body of the deceased victim was already covered, but had not yet been collected by the team from the National Institute of Forensic Medicine in Lisbon, which had also responded to the call. The National Republican Guard was still there, but the presence of the INEM was no longer visible. In fact, the Mines and Traps Brigade of the GNR was immediately deployed in the FCT as soon as the alert was given.

“When we explore cutting-edge technology, accidents can happen”

The Ydreams building, next to which the explosion occurred, It is located in a peripheral area of ​​the facilitiesat the southern limit of the perimeter — which allowed the activities of the faculty (which houses more than eight thousand students and where, at the moment, the examination period is taking place) to continue as normally as possible. At the main entrance of the FCT, the Observer approached a group of young people, who had already heard about the explosion, but had not noticed the incident.

In addition to the death of a 25-year-old man, initially reported by Civil Protection and confirmed by Universidade Nova, the explosion also caused two other injuries, according to information provided by Universidade Nova. One of them, a man, who was admitted approximately one hour after the explosion to the emergency room of the Garcia de Orta Hospital, was confirmed to the Observatory by an official source from that hospital unit. According to what Observador was able to verify, he was an Omnidea employee who was shocked by the situation and the death of his colleague and needed hospital care. As for the other injured person, there is no detailed information.

But what went wrong, especially with regard to the safety standards used in the tests, to cause an explosion like this?

Pedro Loureiro (founder of SPACEO, a Portuguese aerospace company) explains to El Observador that Omnidea is probably developing tests with liquid gases, in “high pressure tanks”, with the aim of testing rocket propulsion. “Normally they are controlled explosions, but when we are exploring cutting-edge technology, there can be accidents.”He admits, citing the example of Space X, that it had to deal with several explosions during rocket launches.

Faculty admits it knew about the use of gases in facilitiesbut he assures that there was security

To journalists, the director of the Scientific Council of the FCT explained that the companies located in the facilities “exercise [atividade] “independently” and “must guarantee all security protocols related to the activity they carry out.” This part is not the responsibility of the faculty, says José Paulo Santos, since these are “business activities.”

Regarding the general security plan of the facilitiesthe FCT director assured that it was put into practice after the incident and “appropriate precautions” were taken. José Paulo Santos added that the The university is still determining what procedures it will adopt in response to the incident.However, he added, a judicial investigation is already underway.

José Paulo Santos guaranteed that the FCT was informed about the use of gases and chemicals in the facilities and who visited the Omnidea facilities after verifying that “safety principles were being followed”. After the explosion, and according to information from Civil Protection, 50 agents and eight firefighting units were deployed, as well as INEM vehicles.