Aussies Still Searching for 'Home Sweet Home' in Rio

(ATR) The Australian Olympic team can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to their housing at the Olympic Village.

Or as the Australia chef de mission Kitty Chiller described it to reporters on July 30 ""Really? Of all the 31 buildings it had to be building 23? After everything that’s happened, I don’t think you could write that script."

The latest trouble was a fire that started in a pile of rubbish in the underground basement of the building housing the Australian team on July 29. About 100 athletes and officials were evacuated with no injuries.

Chiller says both Rio 2016 and IOC officials were "extremely responsive and extremely helpful" in an emergency meeting called overnight.

The fire follows last week’s serious issues with the building which forced the Australian team to temporarily move out. So-called stress tests to check the viability of gas, electricity and plumbing were an abject failure.

As for the fire, a final report is expected shortly but it is believed the fire was probably started by a cigarette thrown into the rubbish.

"We’ve asked Rio to enforce a very strict non-smoking policy," Chiller says, "At the moment it’s not. And Rio 2016 also had workers there first thing this morning, and it’s still underway, to clear all the rubbish." She says "there’s a lot of debris from all the contracting work that has been done that is still sitting in our basement."

Another issue surrounding the fire was the fact that the fire alarms did not work. Chiller says they discovered after the fact that the alarm system had been deactivated in the building for a period of several hours while work was being done on the building next door.

"Obviously that’s completely unacceptable A) that the fire alarm was disabled and B) if it had to be, we weren’t warned about that. We’ve now insisted that that fire alarm system is never deactivated again. The keys have been removed from the numerous people who previously held them. Now only one person who is responsible for our building is able to unlock that cabinet, or whatever it is, where you can switch it off."

The incident did reveal a flaw in the Aussies’ emergency plans. One of the athletes at the press conference with Chiller, Warren Potent, admitted that he had slept through the whole ordeal in his room.

The comments of Potent, a five-time Olympian in shooting, took Chiller by surprise.

She admitted being concerned and said that it was "something that I’ll take back to make sure that doesn’t happen again."

"What we have put in place is a fire warden on every floor and as we had a few people running up and down 18 floors yesterday getting people out we clearly missed a couple. So we now have a fire warden on every floor so I’m confident that that situation wouldn’t happen again."

Written by Gerard Farekin Rio de Janeiro

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