A mute response to a fire alarm at Eden Park on Tuesday is cause for concern in the event of a real emergency, writes Mad Chapman.

In the instrumental break between the first verse and chorus of Dave Dobbyn’s ‘Welcome Home’, the faint sound of a fire alarm could be heard. It almost sounded as if it were being played on a TV rather than in real life, because the VIP lounge at Eden Park is almost entirely sound-proof against noise within the stadium. “Attention, attention, the fire alarms are sounding. Evacuate at the nearest exit,” instructed the alarm. The voice was momentarily drowned out by Dobbyn before returning to repeat its call to evacuate. 

Nobody moved. The music continued to play and patrons continued their conversations. Fifa personnel and various stakeholders milled about drinking champagne and eating olives to the faint soundtrack of a very real fire alarm. I turned to my friend, “can you hear that? Should we leave?” She nodded and we made our way past the bar and towards the exit. On the way we saw a worker in a Fifa uniform shaking her head at a patron who had asked if we should evacuate. “Pretty sure it’s a false alarm,” she said. When we got to the exit, still the only people in the room to move, we were told by those at the door not to worry. “They’re taking care of it downstairs,” one person assured us. “It’s a false alarm.” 

On the field, the second half of USA vs Portugal had just started. On TV, the commentators continued to call the play-by-play, at one point joking that the alarm was probably distracting for the players.

“But should we go outside?” I asked, back in the lounge. The woman at the door shook her head while the voice from the alarm continued to call for our attention. My friend and I stood there for another moment, unsure what to do since no stadium-wide announcement had been made to say it was a false alarm.

A few minutes later, as everyone in the lounge continued to ignore the alarm that was still instructing us to evacuate immediately, we walked back out into the stands. The alarm stopped and the game continued. In fact, play had never stopped. A full 10 minutes later, a voice came over the PA to announce that the fire alarm was a false alarm and to please return to our seats. No one moved because no one had left their seats in the first place.

So what if the alarm had been real?

When emergencies occur at events, whether a small theatre or a large stadium, the most important thing is cohesion. An alignment of alert and action. On Tuesday night, that alignment was missing. Cathy Knowsley is a crowd management and safety consultant for entertainment and events, and heard the alarm sounding while watching the game at home. She wondered if there was an evacuation happening despite play continuing on the field. “If you’re going to have some automated message saying you need to evacuate, then you probably should evacuate.”

 Why? “Boy who cried wolf.”

Fans who sat through an alarm and were proven “correct” in not moving once it was announced as a false alarm are less likely to move next time one sounds. “If you were going to Eden Park this weekend and the alarm goes off, you’d go ‘this happens all the time’,” says Knowsley.

On Tuesday, RNZ reported that some American fans had jumped over a barrier and made it to the exit but found the doors were closed. Others saw them asking the security guard to open the doors. “Americans have grown up with, you know, shooting, and that sort of thing,” Knowsley explains. “And so they may be culturally more attuned to moving. 

“Kiwis are going to sit and go ‘nah it’s probably a false alarm’, because we don’t have a history of stadium fires and shootings and disasters at our events. So we assume that it’s going to be OK.”

When crowds are diverse and respond differently to an emergency alarm, it increases the need for coherent and cohesive coordination from event staff, whether that be images on the big screen, a human voice over the PA system or volunteers instructing being on the ground. On Tuesday there was a chasm between what was being heard through the alarm and what was being said by volunteers and security in the stands. 

“Fifa has got a whole lot of volunteers there who have gotten you into the building and out of the building at the end. And I don’t know, have they had training? Do they have the earpieces that tell them what to do? And how much training have the security guards been given?”

Eden Park did not respond to questions I put to them about how the response was coordinated and the decisions behind not communicating the alarm status earlier. It did not respond to requests for information about who was responsible for communicating the alarm information to event staff and supporters.

Instead, a statement attributed to CEO Nick Sautner was sent, apologising for “any upset caused”. Satner said staff knew “immediately”, through the fire safety systems, the location of the activated sprinkler and “within three minutes” management had determined there was no safety concern and an evacuation wasn’t needed. 

For those three minutes, a siren sounded and a voice instructed everyone to evacuate.

Stadium tragedies have happened before, specifically fatal fires. But Knowsley acknowledges that the concrete structure of New Zealand stadiums greatly lessons the risk of a large and sudden fire. However there are other emergencies that require equally swift action. “f it’s a real emergency, seconds count. And if there’s a lag in responding to the alarm, that’s a real issue.” And if spectators aren’t confident in the venue telling them what to do, they’ll look to others to follow. “You’re leaving far too much in there for people to make up their own minds about things. Those are all creating risks out of the situation.”

Sautner said that Eden Park management would be assessing procedures and the incident, which Knowsley knows is all they can do now. ““I think that will be something that, as a venue, they’ll be going, ‘was that good enough?’”

There are more games being played at Eden Park this weekend, and in Wellington and Dunedin. Tens of thousands of fans will pack into stadiums, trusting that if there was an emergency, they’d be kept safe. 

The day after the USA vs Portugal match, Knowlsley attended a world cup match at Wellington Regional Stadium. As she strolled around the concourse during the game, she noticed all the emergency exits were wide open.