Intrusive alarm forces US envoy out of meeting

KAMPALA - While addressing university students in Kampala, the US ambassador to Uganda Deborah R. Malac was interrupted by a persistent fire alarm.

Malac was addressing the group as a guest speaker during a governance and peace symposium at Hotel Africana in Kampala on Wednesday afternoon.

In the middle of her delivery, a false fire alarm went off for nearly 15 minutes, forcing unease inside the room.

"The ambassador will not be able to finish this meeting because she has got an urgent call, so we should let her leave," one of her handlers said while trying to stop journalists from taking her pictures as she exited the conference hall.

Once the intrusive alarm had stopped, proceedings resumed at the conference organized under the theme, ‘post-election peace and prosperity'.

But then it went off again, drawing more looks of concern among the people in the hall. One after the other, they made for the exit as others hesitantly kept put - before eventually succumbing to the growing uncertainty and also following suit.

At the time, management could not readily establish what the matter was but some janitors found on the way out attributed the false alarm to a faulty address system.