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Customer presses fire alarm, triggers panic at IKEA store

Being a holiday, there were many elderly couples and families with children.

Hyderabad: The IKEA store was evacuated at about 8 pm on Sunday after a fire alarm went off. It was only after some time that officials realised that the alarm was mistakenly triggered by a customer.

Being a holiday, there were many elderly couples and families with children.

An official said a customer pulled a manual call point by mistake which led to the fire alarm. The call point initiated an alarm signal and that caused the management and staff to evacuate the shop of all customers.

This led to some panic as the customers were told all of a sudden to leave the store for safety reasons. There were more than 1,000 people inside the store and they were evacuated out within 10 minutes and directed to a spot near the entrance area.

Guards were deployed to control the situation. The parking space too was closed for verification.

The store management checked the store through security cameras and realised that a guest had pulled the plug which led to the fire alarm system getting activated.

The verification took about 30 minutes after which the security guards first entered the premises to double-check that there was no fire.

The customers were later allowed to enter the store.

( Source : Deccan Chronicle. )
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