Only 12 of 31 Olympic Village buildings have passed safety inspections
With athletes beginning to pour into Rio de Janeiro for the Olympic Games that begin in less than two weeks, officials admitted Monday that only 12 of 31 buildings in the Olympic Village in which competitors will be housed have passed safety inspections.
Stress tests have not yet been conducted in every building because construction on the $1 billion complex of 17-story buildings was so far behind schedule, according to The Guardian. On Sunday, a “small fire” broke out where the Dutch team is supposed to stay, and Australian team officials found their quarters uninhabitable when their building failed a stress test.
“We decided to do a ‘stress test’ where taps and toilets were simultaneously turned on in apartments on several floors to see if the system could cope once the athletes are in-house,” Kitty Chiller, the Australian Olympic Committee’s chef de mission, said in a statement published in the Sydney Morning Herald. “The system failed. Water came down walls, there was a strong smell of gas in some apartments and there was ‘shorting’ in the electrical wiring.”
By Monday evening, Chiller was saying that she expected all of her athletes could move from their temporary hotel rooms into the village on Wednesday. There is likely to be a kumbaya moment when Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes, who flippantly told the Australians, “I almost feel like putting a kangaroo in front of their building to make them feel at home,” hands over the keys.