Passengers at Dublin Airport were left perplexed on Friday morning when an evacuation alarm malfunctioned.
The alarm went off at 6.30am in Terminal One and warned passengers: “Attention please. We are responding to an alarm activation. Please evacuate this area immediately and follow the directions of airport staff.”
Fire marshals and the airport police were on the scene soon afterwards.
There is a fault with our PA system at our Pier 1 gates @DublinAirport. The system is stuck on evacuation mode. There is NO evacuation of this area. Our sound engineers are currently investigating.
— Dublin Airport (@DublinAirport) June 1, 2018
Passengers took to Twitter to complain about confusion in the airport. One tweeted: “@DublinAirport crazy scenario in terminal 1 being asked to evacuate but staff have no clue how to manage this.”
Another tweeted: “Alarms going off @DublinAirport saying to evacuate. Nobody moving, not even staff look bothered. Nice if someone announced what’s happening.”
DAA spokeswoman Siobhán Moore said: “When we established there was a fault with the system, we deployed people to the area and let them know. We got on to Twitter too to let people know that there was no evacuation.
“Airport police and customer service colleagues quickly deployed to the area to tell people there was no issue.”
Ms Moore said that the fault was remedied at approximately 6.50am. She said there was no disruption to flights and all passengers got away on time.
“I never recall it being stuck on on-mode before. It was just a fault in the system,” she said.
