Travelers at Auckland International Airport were not happy after a six-hour evacuation ordeal that occurred today.
A seemingly minor fire in an air-conditioning vent required the international terminal’s check-in, departures, and baggage hall to be evacuated.
Update: After more than five and a half hours stuck in the arrivals hall at Auckland Airport, we’ve all been reunited with our bags and able to leave.
— Sydney Kings (@SydneyKings) December 8, 2018
Arriving passengers were stuck on planes, in buses, and behind the customs and passports control areas. Many were in areas without food, water, or restroom access.
The evacuation began at about 6 p.m. and emergency services gave the all-clear about an hour later.
Around 9 p.m., the airport allowed evacuated travelers to enter the international check-in areas.
The arrival baggage hall had been flooded by the sprinklers that put out the fire. Around 11 p.m., the airport began processing arriving passengers. By this time, it’d been nearly five hours since the entire ordeal began, but many travelers had to wait against the backlog of processing, adding at least another hour to their wait time.
Travelers tweeted videos and photos about their five to six-hour nightmares at Auckland International Airport.
Stuck at Auckland airport customs area for going on to five hours now. Comms not great. We talk a lot about it’s not the message (good or bad) but how you deliver it that is important. In this case it’s been more of there hasn’t been any messages. Room for lots of improvement pic.twitter.com/u8JP0xixHm
— Paula Vivili (@psvivili) December 8, 2018
Stuff reported that some travelers were threatened with $1,000 fines for taking videos of the chaos.
One passenger told Stuff she was evacuated from “the wrong side of customs” and made to “wait in the middle of tarmac with no water or toilets and absolutely no communication from the airport at all.”
She added, “There is no information, just this ongoing evacuation alarm, but no evacuations are happening. More importantly, no information is being passed on to us.”
Another said, “We’ve waited for 50 minutes at passport control, just hearing: ‘Attention, please! You may be required to evacuate the area you’re in. Please await further instructions.’”
Many shared stories of having to stand with no areas to sit.
Still stuck in arrivals. 5.5 hrs and counting, making announcements every hour saying 10 mins we will get an update. Ridiculous. We hungry, someone order pizza. @AKL_Airport is paying. I’ll take a pepperoni. #aucklandairport #auckland pic.twitter.com/cjzlRwSsYu
— YonderRL (@YonderRL) December 8, 2018
“We were standing because there is nowhere to sit but the floor. Some older people look exhausted beyond measure. This is just the icing on the cake!” said one traveler.
One said: “To sum up my experience: I have been kept in customs for near on four hours with an alarm that sounded every 10 seconds. Why they didn’t decide to turn it off earlier I don’t know. It took them three hours to address the situation over a loud speaker.”
Auckland Airport tweeted updates throughout the evening and continued to thank travelers for having patience.
