FIBA Women's World Cup Hotel Evacuated Twice in Three Days, Second Time for a Real Fire

Nearly every team at the FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup has been yanked out of bed by the same Berlin hotel twice in three days. The second time, there was actually a fire.

FIBA said the alarm at the Radisson Collection Hotel went off at 9:06 a.m. local time Tuesday. Teams filed outside, followed standard procedure, and were back in their rooms by 9:27 a.m., a 21-minute disruption.

"Following a thorough inspection, it was confirmed that the alarm was activated due to the start of a fire in the garbage room located in the underground basement of a neighbouring parking facility," FIBA said in a statement. The organization said police are investigating the circumstances and added, "the safety of all participants remains FIBA's priority."

FIBA's account matches reporting from Fox News and WFMD, which ran the same account of Tuesday's incident.

This was not the first wake-up call. Two days earlier, around 2 a.m. Sunday, the same hotel got evacuated after someone manually triggered the fire alarm inside an elevator, according to Australia head coach Sandy Brondello, speaking to the Associated Press. That evacuation lasted about an hour. Hotel management later apologized, calling the incident "beyond our control" and asking guests not to trigger the alarm without an actual emergency, according to BasketNews, which cited Sky Sport.

Every team in the tournament is staying at that hotel except Team USA, which booked separate accommodations. That means the Americans have slept through both incidents undisturbed while the rest of the field has not.

The Sunday alarm hit Turkey hardest. Turkey head coach Andrea Masso said his team got roughly three hours of sleep before facing Australia later that morning. "They had a really bad night last night," Masso said, according to the Associated Press. "That's not an excuse, but that's the reality." Turkey lost that game 87-71.

Australia, despite being woken up at the same hour, won it. Forward Ezi Magbegor shrugged off the disruption. "It was kind of crazy. Just kind of happened," she said, per the AP. "Knowing that it's out of our control, so just getting back to sleep and waking up. No one was going to feel sorry for us." Brondello herself joked about it afterward: "That's a what-if situation, isn't it? Now we have that in our toolbox. Never done that before."

Belgian guard Elise Ramette treated the whole thing as a bonding exercise, posting to her Instagram story at 2:04 a.m., "When the whole hotel gets evacuated in the middle of the night, ultimate teambuilding," as reported by Yahoo Sports and Essentially Sports.

Italy was also staying at the hotel and got caught in the Sunday alarm before facing Team USA that same night in a game that tipped off at 8:45 p.m. Berlin time. Italy had opened its tournament with a win over Czechia; Team USA had opened with a win over China.

Tuesday's fire hit at a worse moment competitively. It came on the opening day of the tournament's knockout stage, with Hungary facing Japan and host Germany facing South Korea in games that determine who advances to Thursday's quarterfinals against Team USA and Belgium. FIBA reported no injuries and no schedule changes from either incident.

Whether back-to-back evacuations at the same property, one false alarm and one real fire, says something about that hotel's maintenance or alarm protocols beyond bad luck remains unclear. FIBA hasn't addressed that directly, and no source has reported the organization moving teams to a different property or auditing the building. Police in Berlin are still investigating what started the Tuesday fire, and FIBA has not said whether that investigation could affect where the remaining games are staged. The tournament runs through Sept. 13.