More than 300 hotel guests evacuated after hoax bomb call in Waterford
A hotel was evacuated in Waterford City this evening following a security threat.
Three hundred and two guests were staying in Tracey's Hotel on the Quay at the time.
Gardai received a call just before 7pm and alerted the manager.
The building was searched and the gardaí declared the alert a hoax at 8.30pm tonight.
A Garda spokesperson said: "The area has been declared safe and gardaí are standing down."
Thankfully, a hoax. Aggravating that so much emergency service time gets wasted like this. #Waterford pic.twitter.com/SlUCXyvkrt
— Dermot Keyes (@DermotKeyes) September 13, 2018
John Tracey, the General Manager and owner of the hotel, told WLR FM: "The gardaí got a phone call to say that there was a device in the hotel and it's going to go off within the next half an hour.
"I got a phone call from the sergeant that was on duty, he has my personal number, and I started evacuating everybody from the hotel.
At work in #Waterford with our @WaterfordFire @GardaTraffic colleagues following a security alert in a local business. All services stood down after a full search. Nothing Found at scene. @HSE_HR @HSELive @PeopleofHSE @NasDirector @coregan999 @ambo911 pic.twitter.com/9cpSJrgR49
— NAS_Waterford (@NAS_Waterford) September 13, 2018
"The gardaí started arriving about two minutes after that and we continued to evacuate. The evacuation of everybody took just under nine minutes for 302 guests."
