A week after Australian officials found their Olympic Village quarters uninhabitable because of “blocked toilets, leaking pipes and exposed wiring,” its athletes were robbed when they evacuated their rooms because of a fire and they later claimed that the fire alarms had been deactivated.

About 100 athletes and staff members were forced to evacuate the 18-story building for about 30 minutes Friday night when a fire believed to have been caused by a discarded cigarette in the smoke-free building broke out in the basement. During the athletes’ time away from the building, two laptops and team shirts allegedly were stolen.

“We did lose some shirts and a couple of laptops, one on the fifth floor from a cycling official and one in the office downstairs,” Mike Tancred, the Australian Olympic Committee spokesman, said Sunday.

Of greater concern was the matter of the fire alarms. The Australians claim that Warren Potent, a shooter, slept through the evacuation and was not awakened by calls or knocks on his door.

“What we have subsequently found is that the fire alarms had been silenced while they were carrying out maintenance on the building next door to ours,” Kitty Chiller, Australia’s chef de mission, said (via ABC Australia). “We hadn’t been advised that the fire alarms were silenced, so how we found out was basically smoke in the corridors and stairwells. It’s absolutely not satisfactory at all.”

Chiller believes the fire began in trash left behind as contractors finish construction. The Australian team moved into the quarters mid-week and Chiller pronounced them fine. But contractors completing their punch lists use workers who smoke.

“There’s a lot of rubbish around the place which a lot of countries have been talking about for the last few days, left from contractors, left from workers,” Chiller said.

Questions about the fire alarms aren’t likely to sit well with Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes, who downplayed comments by Chiller last week by offering to place a kangaroo at the Village to make Australians feel welcome. Chiller responded by giving him a toy kangaroo.


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